Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [84]
But she knew when. It had been a summer afternoon when she was twenty. Dillon had disappeared from her life, forever, she thought. Her father had died, and her mother was holding the post-funeral reception in the garden of their house in Marshfield. It was a beautiful spring day, and Jamie was wearing pale yellow—her father’s favorite dress. Her mother had had a fit, telling her it was disrespectful, but for once Jamie had held firm. Her father had loved it, and she had loved her father, and no amount of pressure from her mother would make her dress in sober black.
She was talking with one of her mother’s friends, holding a cup of tea in one hand, smiling with her mouth, not her eyes. She could remember how she felt at the time, the desperate longing to smash the teacup on the ground and run away, but she’d held firm and done her social duty to her mother’s eventual grudging approval.
Nate must have taken that picture when she hadn’t realized it. And somehow Dillon had ended up with it, hiding it away in his wallet.
She didn’t want to think how he got it. She couldn’t begin to understand him, and the smartest thing she could do was not even try. At least, not until she was safe at home.
She plugged in the pay-as-you-go cell phone she’d bought with Dillon’s money, gave it a few moments to build up a minimal charge, and then dialed home. It was almost a shock to hear her mother’s voice on the other end.
“Where are you, Jamie?”
“On my way home. I’m afraid I don’t have Nate’s things. There…there wasn’t anything there.” She never lied, and she was lying to her mother.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Dillon said he had two full boxes of Nate’s possessions. I want those things, Jamie. They’re all I have left of him.”
“They’re gone,” she said flatly. “And so is Nate.” And then she froze, as Dillon’s words came back to her. That Nate might not be dead after all. Someone had been haunting Dillon’s garage, leaving dead rats, trying to hurt her, carving words into her skin. Murdering Mouser. And Dillon was many things, but despite his nickname, he was no killer.
But Nate couldn’t be. Couldn’t be alive, couldn’t be trying to hurt her. He was a brother to her, family. She’d learned the hard way not to trust him—he’d never told her the truth about the night of the prom, or about a million other things. And he was dead. Dillon had identified him.
Identified a body that was beaten into an unrecognizable mess. What if Nate had turned the tables on whoever tried to kill him?
“Jamie, are you listening to me?” Her mother’s voice was strident in her ear, and it came to her that Isobel hadn’t asked her how she was. Hadn’t asked anything about her, only about Nate. And she didn’t know whether it was Dillon’s power of suggestion or the truth finally hitting home, but she realized that she had always been an afterthought, at least for her mother. Her father had loved her, she knew that much, but Isobel had always been fixated on Nate. And Nate had taken advantage of it.
“I’m here,” she said faintly. The skin at the top of her stomach was hurting again—the scratchings were deeper there, still seeping some blood. “Does the word dungeon mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does. Don’t you remember? It’s what Nate used to call the family home. The place that burned, the Kincaid family estate. It was called Dungeness Towers, but I suppose Nate was too little to say the real name, so he called it the Dungeon.”
“What happened to it?”
“Jamie, I’m not interested in ancient history, I’m interested in what happened to Nate’s possessions….”
“Where is the Dungeon?” She overrode her mother’s arguments ruthlessly.
“In Connecticut. After Nate died I inherited the place, but I haven’t had the heart to do anything about it. It’s just a bunch of ruins, probably quite dangerous. Once I’m feeling a little stronger I’ll have the place bulldozed and sell the land. After all, my sister and brother-in-law died there—I hardly have fond memories of the place.”
“What about Nate?”
“Nate loved it. He didn’t think I knew, but he used to go camping there. And take his