The House Beyond the Dunes, page 12
“I sensed he was a very motivated man.” Intense, driven, focused, and when that attention shifted to me, it was intoxicating. Had I become the next conquest? I’m not sure how long I’d have been comfortable with Kyle’s constant texts and calls. “Are your parents still here?” I ask.
“No. Both are dead. Living up here isn’t an easy life.”
“But you came back.”
“For work.” He’s making this very clear. “Devon called me, and I can’t say no to her.”
“You didn’t return for old times’ sake?” My ability to tease is rusty, and I see immediately my words don’t land well.
“No.”
“Right.”
He immediately shifts the conversation back toward me. “Where’d you grow up?”
“Norfolk.”
“Family?”
“My mother died when I was young. Foster homes after that.”
“That had to be rough. Being alone, I mean.”
I swivel my gaze toward the windshield. “It wasn’t terrible.”
“But not great, right?”
“I’m here now. Still standing.” I don’t want to talk about me. “How long will it take to fix the flood damage in the house across the street?”
“Weeks, maybe months. My crews will be here in a few days, and then we’ll really get moving. I was the only one available to handle the immediate damage control.”
“No holidays for you.”
“New Year’s isn’t my favorite holiday. Too many festivities.” A smile flicks his lips. “Plus, it’s good work in a slow economy. You know Kyle owned that house, right?”
“I didn’t know that. How many houses did he own up here?”
“He built just the two, and then there’s the house he would’ve inherited from his brother’s estate if it’s ever settled. Jeb, his brother, owned the family house, but it’s mired in unpaid back taxes.”
“I had no idea.” I shake my head. “I’m saying that a lot.”
His brow furrows. “What were you and Kyle fighting about?”
I’m silent, trying to decide if the truth is the right hand to play. “I still don’t remember anything right before the fall. It’s like a switch flipped in my head. I think Kyle was annoyed with me, but I don’t know why. Did you hear what we were saying?”
Reece is silent before he shakes his head. “I couldn’t make out the words.”
“You mean mine?”
Again, more silence. “You were shouting, screaming. If Kyle was saying anything, I didn’t hear him.”
That still doesn’t sound right. “Are you sure someone else wasn’t in the house? Devon said she was going to cook for us. Maybe she came in early and was the woman you heard.”
“There was no one else in the house that I saw,” he says.
“How do you know? Did you search it?”
His gaze is steady, but he shifts his grip on the wheel. “I didn’t see anyone else. What are you getting at?”
“I still can’t believe we could’ve had a knock-down, drag-out fight within an hour of arriving. We were kissing moments before.”
He grimaces, shifts away from me, leaning on the door, as if he doesn’t want to know about Kyle and me. “I found you both at the bottom of the stairs. I called 9-1-1, and then I checked on you and Kyle. You were unconscious, but you had a heartbeat. Kyle didn’t, so I started chest compressions. He never responded, but given the blood and the angle of his neck, I wasn’t surprised. I worked on him for fifteen minutes before the rescue squad and sheriff arrived.”
I raise my hands to my lips, stifling a sob. “The rescue squad arrived here that fast? All the way up here?”
“We’ve a rescue squad a couple of miles from here. They serve this area. Once they arrived, they immediately called the med flight, and you were airlifted to Norfolk. The detective talked to the paramedics on the phone and insisted that Kyle’s body stay behind.”
“Detective Becker.”
“That’s right.”
“I spoke to him on Friday. How long did it take him to get here?”
“Less than an hour.”
“That fast?”
“I guess he was on this side of the bridge when he got the call.”
Detective Becker. He’s popping up everywhere. “What kind of questions did he ask?”
“He wanted to know about you and Kyle. I told him I heard you two fighting. After that he walked the house and then asked me the questions again. Cops like to see if your answer changes. Mine didn’t.”
“He said the medical examiner ruled Kyle’s death undetermined.” I let the word hang in the air. “Even if Kyle and I had been squabbling, I still don’t understand why Detective Becker would’ve assumed the fall was anything more than an accident.”
“It was more than a squabble. You were very upset. And then there was silence. It didn’t feel right, so I checked.”
“Upset? Screaming.” The words sound distant, disconnected from me. “That’s not me. I keep my emotions under a tight lid.”
“They weren’t on Friday.” He glances at me as if trying to reconcile what he’s heard with my words.
Kyle’s frown flashes, and I’m suddenly clamping down on anger. I can almost feel his fingers tightening on my arms.
Reece slows the truck and turns down a small, rutted dirt road. I grip the door to steady myself and maybe brace a little to jump out if necessary. This is the place a man takes a woman if he wants to kill her.
He stops in front of a small house on pilings. The wood siding is grayed by harsh weather and sun. The windows are shuttered. Tall grass grows up around the pilings, nearly reaching the front porch. There’s an old truck covered with a tarp.
“How far are we from the beach?” I ask.
“About a mile.”
“It feels light-years away,” I say, more to myself.
Seat leather creaks when he leans back. As he looks toward the house, he’s tapping his thumb against the steering wheel. “This is the house where Kyle grew up.”
I can’t reconcile the polished man I knew with this tired, deserted place. There was never a hint of a southern accent to soften his words or any mention of a humble upbringing. He often said he was a city boy. “It looks abandoned.”
“It has been since Jeb was sent to prison.”
“Was Kyle planning on fixing it up?”
“He never said a word about this place to me.”
“He said one of the worst things you can do to a person is ignore them.” This place has been disregarded, forgotten, and is literally falling in on itself. It’s a slow, painful death.
“It would cost a fortune to fix this place up. It’s not worth the land it stands on.”
Kyle was so meticulous with everything he touched. He could have tried to keep this place up over the years while Jeb was in prison, but he didn’t. “He wanted this place to suffer.”
“Suffer?” Reece flinches and then shakes his head. “It’s a house, Lane.”
“No, it’s a symbol, a warning, to where he came from and how far he could fall.” I’d come from nothing, and the higher I rise, the more I fear falling backward. “When you have nothing to lose, risk is easy. It’s only difficult when you have skin in the game.”
“Kyle was never afraid of anything.” Awe and disdain intertwine under the words. “This place is just a house.”
I stare at an open shutter, a salt-streaked window, and the sinking roof. “Was it so horrible to live here?”
“I don’t think it was good,” Reece says carefully.
The gray siding is brittle and breaking. The main support beam of the house appears to be caving in on itself. “Kyle never told you what it was like for him here?”
Reece shook his head. “Kyle never told anyone anything. He kept his secrets to himself.” He tilts his gaze toward the horizon. “I guess that’s why Kyle was good at what he did. No one wants a shrink that talks too much, right?”
I think about the notebook and the traced impression. Stevie. “He never talked to you about his patients?”
Reece chuckles as if the question is crazy. “No. We barely saw each other, and when we did, we talked about construction. The next house to build.”
“You built Kyle’s two houses?”
“I did.”
“But you never talked about fixing this place?”
“No.” His fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
Reece is a gifted craftsman who might’ve been able to resurrect this hovel into a rental property. Yet here it sits, abandoned and crumbling.
I look through the tall weeds to the stairs and wonder if they are sturdy enough for me. “Can we walk around the property?”
He glances at my shoes. “No. Athletic shoes won’t cut it around here.”
“It’s all I have.”
“We can walk toward the house but not that close. The structure is not safe.”
“What’s going to happen to the house now?” I ask.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Kyle’s lawyer.”
I’m curious about the house, so I tug on my gloves, open my door, and step off the road toward it. I don’t wait for Reece to come around his truck and join me. Tall grass brushes the sides of my legs.
As I move closer to the structure, a knot tightens in my chest. If houses have an aura, this one’s very dark. My nerves draw tight like a stretching bowstring. I can’t reconcile the upbeat Kyle I knew with this place.
“When was the place abandoned?” I ask.
“Fifteen years ago, give or take.” I think about Stevie’s diary. She was taken to a place like this. Is this house the reason she’s reaching out to me?
I angle through the grass along a narrow footpath. The sandy ground is uneven and littered with old, corroded beer cans. This is perfect refuge for anyone looking to drink or do drugs.
I’m drawn to the house. I’ve always had a soft spot for broken people. I want to fix and rehabilitate them. Maybe houses are no different.
“Stop,” Reece says as he reaches out for my arm. His grip is firm but not painful. “There’s an abandoned well and septic field on the site. Both are nearby, and with all the grass growth, I’m not exactly sure where they are.”
I’m tempted to pull out of his grip and keep moving. I want—need—to know more about Kyle. And I suspect there are more answers in this old, discarded hovel than the pristine beach house.
I turn toward him. Frown lines are deeper around his mouth. “Aren’t you curious about the house?”
“No.” The tension radiating in him bleeds into me as I stare at the house. “A place like this has nothing good to offer.”
I disagree. Leaving this area will be hard without another visit. I’ll return alone. When Reece isn’t watching.
Chapter Thirteen
LANE
Sunday, December 31, 2023
10:30 a.m.
Reece parks his truck in front of Kyle’s house. When I get out, I glance back at him. He’s leaning toward the steering wheel, watching me. “Thanks for the tour.”
“Sure.” He runs fingers through his thick, dark hair. “Remember to stay away from that area. It’s not safe.”
“Is Earl going to be a problem?”
“Not if you stick to this area. He doesn’t like it up this way.”
“Okay.” I close the truck door.
Reece appeared after the fall and just now. It feels like he’s looking out for me. Maybe out of a sense of loyalty to Kyle.
The lines around his eyes and mouth, the strong jaw, and his broad, muscled shoulders create a sexy image. And I like him. Which doesn’t say much about me, considering forty-eight hours ago my almost-boyfriend and I had just arrived for a weekend getaway.
The tires of Reece’s truck grind against the sand as he turns his vehicle around and drives down the road toward the beach exit. I’m surprised he’s leaving.
I climb the stairs and plug in the security code numbers. The lock turns, and I push open the door.
After being in the cold on those deserted side roads, I’m oddly relieved to be back in this house even though it feels as if it still doesn’t want me. It might have begrudgingly welcomed me with Kyle, but now I’m the interloper. The trespasser. But it’s the closest thing I have to a home base today.
Glancing toward the stairs, I pause, then glower at the scrubbed white floor. Devon is as present in this house as Kyle.
My stomach grumbles, and suddenly I realize I’m starving again. My appetite has returned with a vengeance.
I grab all the luncheon meats, lettuce, condiments, and bread. Within a few minutes, I’m eating. Filling my belly calms the grumbling but doesn’t soften the sense of unease burning in my chest. Coming here wasn’t a good idea. And still, I’m in no rush to leave.
When I’m finished, I put my plate in the sink, and then I walk into Kyle’s office and switch on the lights. I move past his desk to the closet behind it. Door open, I stare into the sterile space, inhale the scent of fresh paint.
When I was a small child, I remember climbing into the closet in my room, burrowing behind the clothes, and closing my eyes. Beyond the closed door, I could hear my mother shouting. She was arguing with a man, a different one each week it seemed. I still don’t recall those arguments, but the anger and venom behind them has always lingered like a bad smell you can’t clear from your nose.
My mother wasn’t an evil person. She didn’t choose to be a single mom. She wanted to love me as other moms do. She said often enough, I should bake cookies for you. Braid your hair. She loved me. I know she did. Yet loneliness drove her into the arms of men who didn’t deserve her.
I never told any of this to Kyle. It was simply too soon in our relationship, though I wonder if time would’ve made a difference for me. Maybe I would’ve told him one day. Maybe he would’ve opened up to me about whatever life he lived in that small house tucked in the woods.
Maybe not.
I happen to glance at my phone and see Detective Becker’s name. I realize the phone has been on mute. I clear my throat. “Detective Becker.”
“Lane, you found your phone. Did you lose it again?”
I see now I’ve missed three of his calls. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m headed your way.”
“What do you mean? I’m not at home.”
“I know. You’re at Kyle Iverson’s beach house.”
“How do you know?”
“Your phone is pinging up there.”
I glance at the phone. Traitor. “Terrific.”
“I caught you off guard on Friday. Kind of an ambush. I didn’t mean for our first meeting to be so contentious.”
I suspect it went exactly as he’d hoped. “What’s your point?”
“I want us to talk about the accident.”
Did he put extra emphasis on the last word, or is my imagination firing out of control?
“I’m hoping since you’ve been at the house, a few memories have wrestled free,” he says.
“I don’t remember anything new,” I lie.
“Doesn’t take twenty-one hours to retrieve a phone.”
“The weather has been bad. Driving south on the beach is too dangerous.”
“You found your way in.”
“Barely, it seems. The beach has changed. It’s difficult to navigate now.”
“I’ve driven in worse. Won’t be a problem for me. Besides, if you have memories or any reactions to the house, it’s my business. In case you forgot, a man died in that house two days ago.”
“When I return home, I’ll stop by your offices in western Currituck County.”
“No need. Turns out, I’m less than ten minutes away from you. Just pulling off the beach now.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t want to see you.”
“But I want to see you.” An amused smile radiates behind the words.
“I need to call my attorney.”
“Call away. See you in ten minutes.”
The line goes dead, but my head pulses with his words. I want to see you. Why is he pushing this? What could have changed in a day and a half to redirect him back toward me?
He can’t know that Stevie has been sending me her diary entries. Right? I glance at the PDF on my phone, open to the entry I read last night. Maybe she can tell me why Becker has focused his attention on me.
Chapter Fourteen
STEVIE PALMER’S DIARY
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
7:00 p.m.
Happy birthday, America!
The bar is packed. Normally, there’s a slowdown on a Tuesday night, but not on the Fourth. Everyone wants to have a good time. Everyone wants to make toasts. Keep the happiness flowing from the beer taps.
I’m on the move from almost the moment I step behind the bar. I got lucky last night and found an unrented cottage, parked in the carport under the house, and slept five whole hours. I also slid into the YMCA and grabbed a shower. It felt good to wash the grime and sweat off my body. As I dried my hair, I could see that the brown rinse had faded a little. Not a big deal, but I do prefer the darker shade. After a big lunch, the heat drove me toward the outlet malls, where I wandered for hours. I bought a new black Graveyard of the Atlantic T-shirt, which I’m now wearing.
Joey carries a tray loaded with sandwiches toward a table of guys as I fill drink order after drink order. I move in a steady rhythm. I guess you could say, I’m in the zone.
I’m two hours into my shift when Bourbon walks into the bar. He looks much like he did days ago, wearing a navy-blue sport jacket, white open-collar shirt, and tan pants. I suspect if he has a tie, it’s tucked in his pocket. If there was ever a guy that didn’t fit in here, it’s him. Not sure what brings him back, but I’m glad he’s arrived. He’s the last person I saw talking to Nikki.
He takes the same seat he had on his last two visits. Joey hustles behind me, grabs his order, and fills a tumbler with aged bourbon. Bourbon sips his drink slowly as his gaze roams the room.
His body language isn’t relaxed or chill. He’s tense and very alert. Several times Bourbon stares at a woman separated from her wing women, hesitates, then moves his gaze on to another woman. His fleeting interest suggests he’s horny, but he’s particular about Ms. Right-for-Now. If he hooked up with Nikki, she’s a distant memory.
