The Uninvited (Krewe of Hunters #8) 3

Tyler stepped forward. This time, he read aloud. “‘My dearest friend and sweetest confidant, little sister mine. I laugh sometimes when I think of the roles the world would have us play and the roles that Fate gives to us instead. I pray for your safety above all else, because it is a dangerous stage upon which you perform. I had heard they noticed the anxiety upon your beautiful face. Whatever the future may bring, wherever it will take you, do not let it steal away the smile you used to wear. We are but a speck in the grand scheme of God’s great plan. While you may play true to your design, remember that war will end.’”

“Stewart Douglas wasn’t angry with her. It doesn’t even sound as if he was—or had ever been—in love with her,” Allison commented.

“You’re the professional historian,” he said, smiling at her, “and I’m just an amateur. But I do know that marriages were frequently arranged at the time.”

“Yes, of course. They were good friends and perhaps the families expected her to marry Stewart. But he wasn’t out for Bradley’s blood for having taken his fiancée. He understood what she was telling him.” Allison sighed. “But this doesn’t mean Bradley didn’t kill Lucy Tarleton.”

“The comments regarding her health might have referred to a pregnancy,” Tyler said.

“Why, yes! That’s possible,” Standish agreed.

“But if Lucy was pregnant with Bradley’s child,” Allison said, “why would he have killed her?”

“Maybe in a fit of rage,” Standish suggested.

“I don’t think he did kill her,” Tyler said.

“If he didn’t, then who did? It doesn’t sound like it would have been Stewart Douglas. The way these letters read, it’s more like a sister and brother writing to each other,” Allison argued.

“I made copies for you. You may take them,” Standish said, as if presenting them with the crown jewels.

“That’s extremely kind of you, Mr. Standish,” Allison said.

“Yes, indeed, thank you.” Tyler felt the buzz of his cell phone in his pocket, excused himself and answered it.

It was Logan, and he already had a report on the phone records. “There were seven calls made to Mr. Standish this morning. Four of them were from Ms. Mia Standish of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.”

“Mia’s your daughter, I assume?” he asked Standish, who nodded.

“And?” Tyler returned to Logan.

“The other three were made from a prepaid cell. It was purchased with cash on Saturday from a Quickie Mart, so no one knows who bought that particular phone. But tracing the satellites, we know the calls were made from Philly.”

Tyler thanked Logan and assured him they were making headway. He hung up and explained to Standish that they couldn’t trace the calls more precisely because they’d been made from a prepaid cell phone.

“I didn’t think you’d get the info on that.” He looked at Tyler. “You’re an agent, for real?”

“I am.”

“Good. Then you can see me to my car and follow me for a few miles. I’m going north to a cabin I have up in the woods with some old hunting friends. I’m not sticking around to die.”

“The danger seems to be in Philly,” Allison said gently.

Standish snorted. “You know, that guide dying in the late seventies might have been an accident, but the rest of the deaths associated with that place? The kid being electrocuted, the heart attack in Angus’s study. And now…another dead guide and a dead board member? Someone is killing people. And I’m going into hiding.”

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” Tyler said.

Allison nodded in agreement. Standish gave her copies of the letters and she thanked him again. He locked his place and went into the garage, where he got into a pickup truck with a shotgun on the front seat.

They followed him for an hour.

There was a chain hotel on the way as they headed back. Tyler suggested they stop there for the night.

When they entered their room, he immediately pulled her into his arms.

She responded with a fiery, passionate kiss, her fingers playing with his waistband and the buckle of his belt. He disarmed himself quickly, fumbling as he unfastened her shirt.

She pulled back, breathless. “This case is all…falling into place.... Perhaps we should be more, um, try to figure it out.”

He reached for her again, letting out a groan as his naked body came into contact with hers.

“I am trying to figure it all out.”

“No, you’re not. You’re kissing my neck,” she told him.

“Yes, and if you keep running your fingers along my spine like that…”

“I should stop.”

“No,” he said huskily, taking hold of her face and staring into her eyes. “What better way could there be to figure out—” he paused to kiss her “—what was going on in the minds of a pair of lovers…than to be a pair of lovers?”

“I like your logic,” she whispered. And proceeded to show him just how much.

16

Tyler had just opened his eyes, feeling the warmth of the morning sun through the motel-room drapes, when his phone began to buzz on the bedside table.

He scrambled to answer it.

Logan was calling him. “Hey, did I wake you?” he asked.

“No, I was waking up. Has something happened?”

“No, but Sean thinks he has the solution to the painting.”

“Really?” He sat up. Beside him, Allison stirred underneath the sheet. He smiled at her, setting a hand on her hip to reassure her that nothing else—like another horrific accident—had taken place.

“So what is it?” he asked Logan.

“It’s not the painting.”

“Pardon?”

“He looked at the painting from every angle with his special lights. Studied it in every way he could without ripping into the canvas—which is just canvas—or taking the whole thing apart. And when he was done, he said he had the answer. There have to be two paintings. Someone has a second painting, and there’s light for the eyes and perhaps some kind of recorder to terrify people or divert their attention. He believes that whoever is doing this somehow manages to switch the paintings.”

Tyler rubbed his eyes. “We’ll hurry back.”

“No rush. Yesterday was uneventful. We went through all the records we could find on the Leigh family—Allison’s branch—and there was no mention anywhere of a baby having been adopted. But there was a son listed as having been born to one of the young Leigh wives in June of 1778, around the time Lucy Tarleton was killed and just before the British evacuated Philly. We can still disinter Lucy and do some DNA testing, but I’m sure we’re right on the money in suspecting that Allison is a descendent.”

“I don’t think we should let Cherry know,” Tyler murmured. Allison was looking at him, and he smiled reassuringly again—or he hoped it was reassuring—but didn’t explain.

“What did you learn?” Logan asked.

“We’re discovering there are a lot of holes in the history that’s been taught. We don’t have the whole picture yet, but I do think Lucy was pregnant—and she had Brian Bradley’s child, not Stewart Douglas’s. What we haven’t figured out is who spirited the baby away and who killed Lucy Tarleton. It doesn’t make any sense for Bradley to have done it.”

“Unless he was afraid of being branded a traitor by the British.”

“Not to be cynical, but remember, having an illegitimate child would have been par for the course on the male side, especially for an aristocrat. The female would be branded the whore. If a British officer, who held power in Philadelphia at the time, had a child with a patriot woman, it might’ve been seen as a ho-hum event. Or even a feather in his cap.”

Allison was frowning at him, but then she smiled. “It’s true,” she whispered. “No one would have thought badly of him. As for Lucy…”

“Regardless of which side he was fighting on,” Tyler said, “I believe he was a good soldier and I don’t believe he was a ‘beast.’ By military standards, it was a sound tactic for the British to take Philly. I see Bradley as a military man. I don’t see him as the kind of man who would kill a woman he loved—a woman who had just borne his child.”

“What about her lover?” Logan asked. “Stewart Douglas.”

Tyler shook his head. “I doubt she and Stewart Douglas were ever really lovers, although they were likely engaged,” he said. “We have copies of the letters. I don’t think Stewart Douglas killed her, either, but I don’t know enough about him. By the way, Martin Standish is a good guy—and a scared one. He left his place for a cabin in the woods. He didn’t tell anyone where he’s going except for his daughter, and we saw him out of town. No one followed him,” Tyler said. “I’m still uncomfortable with the whole situation, though. The office was trashed and Standish received those strange calls yesterday, the ones from the prepaid cell phone. He’s worried. I’m thinking maybe he has reason to be and we should take some action.”

“Can you have Allison try to reach him? Maybe she can persuade him to allow a few agents to watch over him up there. I can send Kelsey and Sean. Bring Allison back to the house. By the way, not a ghost has stirred here. Well, except for Julian Mitchell. He’s ‘keeping guard’ by haunting the entry—and falling asleep on the sofa. That is, when he’s not following Jane around.”

“I’ll have Allison call Standish right away,” Tyler said, “and then we’ll get something to eat and head back to Philly.”

He ended the call and as he looked over at Allison, he felt a tremor streak through him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d like waking next to her. Against the hotel’s snow-white sheets, her hair truly was the color of a raven’s wing, so dark it was touched by a cast of blue. Her eyes were as bright and clear as the sky—and seemed as deep as a sun-kissed sea. It wasn’t just that he found her arousing, which he did, but that being with her seemed so right. She was like someone who’d been missing from his life, and even the good relationships he’d had—the relationships, not the casual nights—didn’t compare with the way he felt now. He couldn’t remember not having her beside him and he would never not want her beside him; he didn’t want to envision a morning without seeing her eyes on his when she woke, or feeling her warmth.