Get a Clue (22 page)

“Gee, that's funny,” Breanne heard herself say. “It almost looks like a bloody towel.”

Cooper didn't say a word, just began to put on the rubber gloves.

“Shelly probably cut herself chopping vegetables,” she said through the roaring in her ears. “You should see how fast she chops. And then she probably shoved the towel down there and forgot about it. Probably.”

Cooper flicked on his flashlight and stuck his head in the cupboard, carefully not touching the towel but trying to see around it.

“Or it could be ketchup,” she said inanely, her mouth running away with her thoughts. “Maybe she spilled ketchup. That could have happened, right?”

Cooper pulled his head back out of the cupboard and looked at her. “Are you breathing? Because you don't look like you're breathing.”

“Oh.” She gulped in a few breaths and tried a smile, which quickly wobbled. “That's not ketchup, is it?”

Cooper slowly shook his head.

“Something really bad happened here.”

“Something,” he agreed. He turned off the flashlight and shut the cupboard door. Then he removed the rubber gloves and reached for her hand.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.

“Shovel. Shovel like hell.”

 

 

They'd found the towel
.

That was bad. They shouldn't have found the towel
.

What would happen now
?

If only it would stop snowing. If only they could all get out, get away from here
.

 

 

For Breanne, getting outside felt like a culture shock, not to mention an actual physical punch to the chest. Her poor lungs weren't adapted to the altitude, much less this biting cold.

At least inside the house, though sometimes equally icy, she'd been in somewhat of a cocoon. There she could see the snow, but had been distanced from it by the huge, frosted windows, buffered by the warm fires.

But standing on the front porch, the ramifications of their situation, with the storm still dumping more precipitation every passing minute, hit her hard. Twelve feet of snow had fallen, setting records, shutting down airports and businesses, closing roads, breaking electrical and phone lines.

The Sierra mountain range, spanning some two million acres of national forests and wilderness land, had come to a screeching halt.

Terrific time to almost honeymoon.

Way out on the outskirts of civilization as they were, this unbelievable storm was apparently accepted as a part of the life here. People were prepared for it with extra food, water, and gasoline for their generators and snowblowers. They'd become an independent entity.

Everything had taken on a whole new meaning these past few days, and it wouldn't have been a problem but for two things. One, the occupants of
this
particular house weren't as prepared as they should have been, and two—and this was the biggie, in Breanne's opinion—
there was a dead body
.

Dead bodies changed everything.

No longer did the house feel cute and quaint—if it ever had. And getting out of here, storm of the century or not, had become a requirement. She stood wrapped in a borrowed stadium-length down coat, a leftover from some forgotten guest. She also had on one of Dante's beanies, and wool socks courtesy of Patrick.

Ever so helpful, her staff.

Huddled in her borrowed gear, she let out a breath that crystallized in front of her face as she took in the scene.

White as far as the eye could see.

And more white.

From here, the humongous mountain peaks that surrounded them in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vista looked innocuous and breathtaking. The flakes fell with an odd gentleness, and utterly silently, stacking on top of the banks of snow that had already fallen, piling up against the house, against the shed, against the garage, so that the three-story log-cabin house appeared to be only a little more than one.

Thanks to the lack of electricity, the house itself was dark. No sparkling lights shining from the windows, no scent of cooking food, nothing but a rather disconcerting hollowness that made it seem lifeless. There was four feet of snow on the roofs despite the fact that they'd unloaded themselves at least twice, leaving huge drifts stacked alongside of each structure, some more than eight feet high, making it impossible to get close to the shed or the garage until they moved the snow.

There were two power lines along the driveway, coated in white and sagging nearly to the ground. The trees were completely covered, and swaying from the weight as if alive. Four of the pines in the front yard had split or collapsed under the tremendous weight of the snow, and would undoubtedly have to be removed. The windows on the north side of the shed had shattered inward.

And still the snow came.

They all shoveled. Or rather, Dante, Patrick, and Cooper shoveled, while Breanne, Shelly, and Lariana watched. Mostly because there were only three shovels, but also because it was damn hard work, and Breanne for one wasn't very good at hard work.

“Look at that sky,” Shelly breathed.

Lariana and Breanne both looked up. In San Francisco, Breanne had rarely ever noticed the horizon. In fact, the last time she'd looked up at all had been on one of her first dates with Dean, when he'd taken her to the roof of his building to show her the summer constellations.

What he'd really wanted to do was impress her, and then get into her pants. Damn it, she
had
been impressed, but she hadn't let him into her pants.

Not that night, anyway.

The point was, though, she wasn't an anal person, or rushed for time on a daily basis, and still, she'd never really spent much time sky-gazing.

Leaning back now, she staggered back a step, found her balance, and stood there in awe as the flakes fell onto her face, cool to her heated skin. It was like an explosion in a mattress factory the way the white flakes, not round, not any particular shape, really, drifted down from the sky like fluffy pieces of cotton in no particular hurry.

Cotton that sure piled up into not-so-innocent drifts that needed to be moved.

By them.

“It's making my mascara run,” Lariana said. “I'm going in.”

Watching the guys work, Shelly nodded. “Me, too, but wow, look at 'em. They're all . . .”

“Hot,” Lariana agreed. “Very, very hot. But even the hottest of the hotties is not worth freezing to death. Let's go.”

Breanne stayed behind. The cold temperature speared right through her but the guys were sweating. Dante wore a black sweatshirt nearly coated over in snow now. Patrick wore his Abominable Snowman outfit. He wasn't as effective a shoveler as Dante, taking smaller shovelfuls and half the time dumping the contents in his own way, swearing with gleeful abandon as he did.

Cooper moved with a steady, easy precision that made it look extremely easy. He wore the blue sweatshirt he'd given Breanne that first night, now also crusted over with snow, but he didn't appear to notice as he labored. Breanne felt entranced watching him, mesmerized by the way his body worked as if poetry in motion. He was like that in bed, too. She figured he was like that in everything he set his mind to, and for a moment, her mind wandered.

What would it be like to see him outside of here, in the real world? Before the answer could come to her, Shelly came back out with bottles of water for the guys.

Breanne looked at the shovel Cooper leaned against a post. Feeling extremely aware of his gaze as he drank, she lifted the shovel. Wow. All by itself, the thing was heavy. But he was watching her, so she dug in, filling the bucket, then attempting to lift it.

It didn't budge.

Okay, no problem. She tipped half of the snow off. That worked.

By the third shovelful, she was panting. By the fourth, she couldn't lift it one more time.

A big hand closed over hers. She raised her gaze to Cooper's. “I'll get it,” he said.

She could see the exhaustion in his face. “I'm sorry,” she murmured. “I wish you didn't have to do this.”

“You feel bad?”

“Very.”

That seemed to perk him up. “Enough to make it up to me?”

She had to laugh at the teasing light in his eyes, but as he turned back to work, her smile faded. Because she found she
did
want to make it up to him. She wanted to do that, and more.

A lot more.

 

 

Breanne went inside to get more bottles of water. Shelly would have gone but Breanne insisted, needing a moment alone. In the kitchen, she set the tray on the counter and loaded more water bottles onto it. As she did, her eyes strayed to the cupboard beneath the sink.

Was the towel still there?

Heart in her throat, she nudged the door open with her toe. Yep, bloody towel still in place.

Her stomach lurched sickly, and she considered staggering weakly back to a chair but heard something behind her.

She spun around fast enough to get dizzy but realized the sound had come from beneath her.

Beneath her
.

Whirling back, she peeked out the kitchen window. Dante, Patrick, Cooper, and Lariana were there. Shelly, too.

Everyone was outside.

Every single person.

At least every single
alive
person.

Oh God, don't go there. This wasn't the movies. There had to be a perfectly good explanation for that noise, and she was going to find out what. Yes, she was. She grabbed a flashlight, and on second thought, another knife from the butcher block.

Just in case.

Just in case what, she had no idea.

The hallway to the servants' quarters was going to give her nightmares for the rest of her natural-born days. Halfway down it, her heart was pounding so hard and fast she couldn't have heard a tornado ripping through over the sound of her own pulse drumming in her ears. She actually had to stop and breathe for a moment to be able to hear at all.

Nothing but silence greeted her, and then . . . a faint thud.

It'd come from behind the one locked bedroom door, naturally. Forget evening out her pulse now—the best she could do was gulp in a breath. She knocked once. “Hello?”

Nothing, though she imagined she heard panicky breathing. On
both
sides of the door. “Anyone in there?” She knocked again and told herself she was fine. Nothing could happen to her; she held a butcher's knife, for God's sake.

No one answered. Of course not, because the only one down here was Edward, and his answering days were long over. Turning, she peeked into the room where Lariana had been sleeping. Neat and tidy as a pin.

The bedroom next to it—Dante's, she could tell by the beanie on the foot of the bed—wasn't nearly as neat. He hadn't made his bed, and he had yesterday's clothes on the floor.

But from under the bed peeked out a hand.

Oh God
.

In some kind of trance, her feet took her inside the room, and then to the mattress, knowing if she found another body she was going to truly start screaming and never stop. Cringing, she bent down, then let out a short, rough breath as she realized the truth.

Not a hand, but a glove. A rubber kitchen glove stained with the same dark brown stuff that was on the towel upstairs beneath the sink. Desperately she wanted to believe what she'd told Cooper, that she was looking at dried ketchup, but she knew better, and had to shove a fist against her mouth.

And then she heard the one sound she hadn't wanted to hear.
Footsteps
. Wildly, she looked around her. No time to get out; oh God, no time to do anything but flatten herself to the floor and scoot beneath the bed, which she managed just as someone came into the room.

Two black boots and two white Keds.
Two
someones.

“We only have a few minutes,” Dante said, sounding out of breath. “The cop is determined to get out of here.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”
Shelly
. “Dante, I lied to you.”

Breanne, already frozen in place beneath the bed, stiffened in shock.
No, Shelly
.

“Tell me.” Dante's voice was low and gruff, and yet infinitely gentle. “It's okay, just tell me.”

“Oh no, it's not what you think!” Shelly rushed to say. “I meant I lied just now, upstairs, about having to talk to you. Because really what I wanted was . . .”

“You wanted what?”

The two Keds shifted until they were toe-to-toe with the black boots. Breanne didn't dare move but the gloves, the bloody gloves, were too close.
They were really beginning to get to her
.

“It's all so complicated,” Shelly whispered.

Yeah, yeah, it's complicated,
Breanne thought, trying not to look at the gloves right at her cheek.
Get back to shoveling!

Then the unmistakable sound of a wet kiss floated down and Breanne scrunched up her eyes. Surely they weren't going to—
No
. Not here, not now—

“I know you said you wanted to wait until we got out of here,” Shelly said breathlessly. “But everyone's outside and will be for a while. Haven't we waited long enough?”

“Shelly—” Dante broke off with a low groan. “God, Shelly, don't do that.”