Cover Of Night

"I’m sure we will," Toxtel said politely.

She gave him room number 3, and Goss got room number 5. Looking around, Goss saw two rooms to the right, on the front of the house, and four more doors to their left. Considering the vehicles in the parking area, at least two of those rooms were occupied, maybe more, depending on how many people had been in each car. Searching the place might not be as easy as they’d hoped.

On the other hand, Goss thought with a smile as he unpacked his things, knowing there was a kid in the place opened up some interesting possibilities.

Chapter 8

Cate didn’t know what was going on, but she suspected that the man who had called late yesterday afternoon to book rooms for Messrs. Huxley and Mellor was the same man who had called earlier, pretending to be someone working at the car rental agency and asking about Jeffrey Layton. She couldn’t be certain, and if she hadn’t already been suspicious, the possibility would never have occurred to her, but both the accent and the voice had seemed familiar and after she’d hung up the phone the familiarity worried at her subconscious until she made the connection.

The two men were obviously looking for Layton, which was also suspicious. If they’d been worried about him because he’d disappeared, obviously they would have said so at the beginning, told her they were looking for their friend and asked questions about the morning he’d left. That they hadn’t done so told her they weren’t worried about his well-being at all. Mr. Layton was in trouble, and these two men were part of that trouble.

She shouldn’t have let them stay here. She knew that now. If she had recognized the voice on the phone in time, she would have told him she didn’t have any rooms available – not that she could have stopped the men from coming to Trail Stop, but at least they wouldn’t be staving here in this house with her and the boys. A chill went down her back at the thought of the kids, and her mother, and even the three young men who had arrived yesterday afternoon for a couple of days of rock climbing. Had she inadvertently put them all in danger?

At least Mimi and the boys were out of the house right now. She had taken Tucker and Tanner for a walk, telling them that she was giving them another chance to prove they knew how to behave, and if they let her down this time… Of course, her mother never finished that line, but as a child Cate had imagined that letting her mother down a second time would come dose to causing the end of the world. Tucker and Tanner had looked suitably grave. Cate just hoped the walk was a long one.

There was the possibility that these two men had no connection with Jeffrey Lay ton at all. Cate couldn’t completely dismiss the idea that her imagination was running away with her. The voices on the phone had been similar, but that didn’t mean the calls had come from the same person – though Caller ID had once again shown no number in the phone window. She felt silly for letting herself think something sinister was going on, but at the same time she was alarmed.

The two men had been perfectly polite. The older one, Mellor, looked out of place in his suit and tie, but that in itself didn’t mean anything. Maybe he’d been to a business meeting, flew in, and hadn’t had a chance to change into more casual clothing. The other one, Huxley, was tall and handsome, and on the make. He’d checked her out, but she hadn’t responded and he’d let it go instead of pushing. Maybe they had a perfectly innocent reason for being here –

That was where her thoughts turned back on themselves. Trail Stop wasn’t on the main route; people had to deliberately come here; they didn’t stop by on their way to somewhere else. If Huxley and Mellor weren’t here to look for Jeffrey Layton, then why were they here? Her usual guests were vacationing families, hikers, couples on romantic getaways, fishermen, hunters, and rock climbers. She’d bet the house that neither of these men fished, hunted, or climbed, because they hadn’t brought along any equipment or gear. Neither were they lovers – not after the way Huxley had been looking at her. Hikers, maybe, but she doubted it. She hadn’t seen them carry in any hiking boots, walking sticks, backpacks, or any of the other paraphernalia serious hikers carried when they were going into remote areas.

The only logical reason left for their presence was Layton – and she didn’t know what to do about it.

She went into the kitchen, where she had started making a batch of peanut butter cookies for the boys. Neenah Dase was sitting at the table, sipping a cup of tea. Business at the feed store was slow, so Neenah had put a sign on the door saving that she was at Cate’s; anyone needing feed would come gel her.

Neenah was a native, born and bred in Trail Stop. Neenah’s father had started the feed store more than fifty years before. Her older sister hadn’t liked rural living at all, and had "gone city" as soon as she got out of high school; she was now living, very happily, in Milwaukee. Cate didn’t know Neenah’s story, other than the bit about her being a former nun – or novice (Cate didn’t know if one could leave an order after becoming a full-fledged nun) – who had come home some fifteen years ago and taken over the day-to-day running of the feed store. When her parents died, Neenah inherited the store. She’d never married and, to Gate’s knowledge, never dated.

Neenah was one of the calmest, most peaceful people Cate had ever met. Her light brown hair had such an ashy undertone that it had a silvery sheen. Her eyes were lake blue, and her skin was porcelain. She wasn’t beautiful; her jaw was too square, her features too unsymmetrical. but she was one of those people who made you smile when you thought of her.

Cate liked most of the people in Trail Stop, but Neenah and Sherry were the ones she was closest to. Both of them were comfortable people to be around – Sherry because she was so upbeat, Neenah because she was so placid.