Behind The Veil

But there was no denying Becca wanted to see Dr. David Bryson. She liked his voice. Or perhaps had been mesmerized by it. Rich, with a whisper of heartbreak.

Now she sounded like a guide giving a spiel to tourists! The simple truth was the man was a recluse who dressed in black and came out of his fortress only at night. And she had agreed to go to his castle like some poor lamb to slaughter.

The only thing to do was call in the morning and back out.

I need you, Becca.

The words slammed into her senses, and her heart thundered in her chest. The voice of David Bryson haunted her. Smooth, mysterious. Seductive.

She’d have to make tomorrow’s visit. If only to satisfy her own curiosity and convince herself that Dr. David Bryson was just a man with no power over her.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

May holds more mayhem for you in this action-packed month of terrific titles.

Patricia Rosemoor revisits her popular series THE MCKENNA LEGACY in this first of a two-book miniseries. Irishman Curran McKenna has a gift for gentling horses—and the ladies. But Thoroughbred horse owner Jane Grantham refuses to be tamed—especially when she is guarding not only her heart, but secrets that could turn deadly. Will she succumb to this Mysterious Stranger?

Bestselling author Joanna Wayne delivers the final book in our MORIAH’S LANDING in-line continuity series. In Behind the Veil, we finally meet the brooding recluse Dr. David Bryson. Haunted for years by his fiancée’s death, he meets a new woman in town who wants to teach him how to love again. But when she is targeted as a killer’s next victim, David will use any means necessary to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.

The Bride and the Mercenary continues Harper Allen’s suspenseful miniseries THE AVENGERS. For two years Ainslie O’Connor believed that the man she’d passionately loved—Seamus Malone—was dead. But then she arrives at her own society wedding, only to find that her dead lover is still alive! Will Seamus’s memory return in time to save them both?

And finally, we are thrilled to introduce a brand-new author—Lisa Childs. You won’t want to miss her very first book Return of the Lawman—with so many twists and turns, it will keep you guessing…and looking for more great stories from her!

Happy reading,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Behind the Veil

Joanna Wayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to

Joanna Wayne for her contribution to the

MORIAH’S LANDING series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanna Wayne lives with her husband just a few miles from steamy, exciting New Orleans, but her home is the perfect writer’s hideaway. A lazy bayou, complete with graceful herons, colorful wood ducks and an occasional alligator, winds just below her back garden. When not creating tales of spine-tingling suspense and heartwarming romance, she enjoys reading, traveling, playing golf and spending time with family and friends. Joanna believes that one of the special joys of writing is knowing that her stories have brought enjoyment to or somehow touched the lives of her readers. You can write Joanna at P.O. Box 2851, Harvey, LA 70059-2851.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Becca Smith—She’s intrigued by the mysterious recluse who lives in the castle on top of the cliff, but will her attraction for him lead her into a killer’s trap?

Dr. David Bryson—Tortured by the loss of his beloved fiancée, he lives only to find the man responsible for the tragedy—until he meets Becca Smith.

Marley Glasglow—He’s surly and bitter, and his opinions about David Bryson—none of them good—are set in stone.

Brie, Kat and Elizabeth—New friends of Becca’s who were present the night Claire Cavendish was abducted.

Claire Cavendish—Becca’s friend who is still mentally and emotionally unstable from her abduction and subsequent torture five years ago.

Kevin Pinelle—A happy-go-lucky young fisherman with an eye for the ladies.

Larry Gayle—A young male friend of Becca and Claire who thinks the town would be better off without David Bryson.

Shamus McManus—An old fisherman who knows a lot about what goes on in the wharf area.

Tasha Pierce—David Bryson’s fiancée, who was killed in an explosion on the eve of their wedding.

Geoffrey Pierce—Tasha’s uncle.

Carson Megham—A homicide detective hell-bent on capturing the killer who’s terrifying the citizens of Moriah’s Landing.

Contents

About the Author

Cast of Characters

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

To Priscilla Berthiaume for putting together

the idea for this wonderful Gothic series, and to my

friends Amanda Stevens, B.J. Daniels and Dani Sinclair for

being such an agreeable, fun and talented group to work

with. A special thank-you to Dr. David Cavanaugh for

answering my endless questions. And to Wayne, always.

Prologue

Sweat beaded on the man’s brow as he struggled to drag the lifeless body into the thick clump of bushes and untamed undergrowth. The stench of death punctuated the night air and clogged his nostrils, but he couldn’t leave her like this. The job had to be done exactly according to plan.

Her leg caught on a rock, and he yanked it free, his hand brushing the delicate curve of her ankle as he did. She’d been an easy victim. Weak, innocent, gullible.

So easy. Almost too easy. He’d expected it to be more of a challenge, more satisfying to watch life seep from her body when he’d strangled her, watch blood gush from the two slashes that had severed her arteries. Instead it was over so quickly, he barely had time to appreciate the perfection of his work.

Just like it had been done twenty years ago. And, like twenty years ago, the stupid Moriah’s Landing police would never solve the murders. There had been four then, but only three remained unsolved and attributed to the serial killer. He’d probably stop at three now, as well. Or maybe he wouldn’t stop at all.

He took the knife, ran his gloved fingers along the edge of the blade, and then plunged it once more into the cold, pale flesh.

Easy. Easy. Easy. And perfect. Only one thing left to do. Working meticulously, he carved an M and an L into her abdomen. Something new to make certain everyone knew that McFarland Leary had returned.

Chapter One

Rebecca Smith snipped the emerald thread, laid her scissors on the table and held up the full satin dress for a critical look at the finished garment. The fabric swished as it fell into iridescent folds, catching the glow of the bright overhead lights.

Standing, she held it to her shoulders and took a few twirls around the room. It was the first piece of clothing she’d made for herself in months, but she’d outdone herself this time. The fabric was fabulous, the color rich, the sheen almost glittery.

Stopping to admire the finished creation in front of the full-length mirror, she could almost imagine herself attending a ball in old England. It would be the perfect dress for the Fall Extravaganza. On that night the town of Moriah’s Landing would be transported back in time, to the way it had been the year it was first inhabited. The night would be magical, a celebration that would hopefully dispel the sense of danger and fear that prevailed every fifth year when McFarland Leary was said to rise from the grave. If everything went as planned, tourists from miles around would flock into the narrow streets to celebrate the town’s three hundred and fiftieth anniversary year in a spectacular evening of dancing, vignettes, music and food.

If all went as planned, they would return to their homes when the festivities were over—alive.

The dress slipped through Becca’s fingers, and she barely caught it before it fell to the floor of the shop. The uneasy feeling that had lurked just beneath her consciousness all day had leapt to the forefront, icy and onerous and threatening to squeeze the life from her lungs.

She hated these moments when she seemed to slip into the depths of some world far beyond the one she knew as a simple seamstress. She never told anyone about these experiences, the same way she never admitted that she was anyone but Rebecca Smith, a young woman with simple values and meager expectations. It was better this way, made her less of an oddity, gave people no reason to pity her or to speculate about her past.

She laid the dress across the worktable, then walked to the front window and stared into the grayness of twilight. The streetlights had come on along Main Street, tiny globes of illumination, blurred and dulled by the thick fog that coated the air. A black car pulled up in front of the liquor store next door and a tall man in a pair of worn jeans and a windbreaker climbed from the passenger side of the car and sauntered to the entrance. He nodded and waved when he caught sight of her watching through the window. She waved back.

Moriah’s Landing was ordinarily a quiet, safe town in spite of the popular tales of witches and warlocks and ghosts who rose from their graves to kill innocent women. She didn’t believe in such nonsense, anyway. Humans committed murders, and though the town of Moriah’s Landing had experienced its share of those, there was no reason to believe that evil still lurked in dark graveyards or strolled the rocky beaches at midnight.

No reason at all, unless you believed the legend of McFarland Leary, a man who’d been dead for centuries and still rose from the grave every five years to torture and kill innocent females.

Or if you bought into the stories that circulated about the monster on the hill. She closed her eyes, and the image of a lean, brooding man with swarthy skin and dark, piercing eyes walked through her mind. Thick hair fell across his forehead and hung past his ears, only half hiding the nasty scar that crawled down the right side of his face.

Dr. David Bryson. Living in the Bluffs, his formidable castle of stone and menacing turrets, guarded by hideous, lifeless gargoyles that bared rusted teeth and sharpened claws.

When she thought of danger and foreboding, his was always the face that appeared in her mind, and still the man intrigued her. She’d asked questions of all her friends, listened to the talk about him, watched for him, half hoping he’d materialize from the shadows when she walked home by herself after dark.

She’d spotted him one night just as she’d finished turning the key to lock the shop door. He’d been standing at the corner near her shop. She’d looked him straight in the eye, studied his features in the faint glow of the streetlight. Her heart had beat erratically, but she’d stood as if frozen to the spot, mesmerized, drawn to the man half the town claimed was a mad murderer.

The jangling of the telephone jolted her from her thoughts. She took a deep breath and forced the image of Dr. Bryson from her mind before she answered. “Threads. How may I help you?”

“Becca, it’s Larry Gayle. Some of us are heading over to the carnival tonight. Want to join us?”

She hesitated. “The weatherman is predicting thundershowers.”

“Aw, come on. It’s Friday night. Kat and Jonah are going, and if it rains, we’ll duck into one of the bars along the wharf.”

“In that case, count me in.” She hadn’t seen Kat nearly enough since her friend had fallen in love with and married Jonah. Jonah was with the FBI and Kat was one of the toughest private investigators around. Still, it had been a rough year for Kat. After twenty years, the man who’d killed her mother in Kat’s presence had finally been arrested. The first of the infamous Moriah’s Landing murders of twenty years ago had been solved. The last three had not.

“What time?” she asked, pushing thoughts of the murder aside.

“I’ll pick you up about seven,” Larry answered, “unless that’s too soon.”

Her gaze rose to the clock over the door. It was already a quarter after six, but it was only a ten-minute walk to the room she rented from the Cavendish family, and it wouldn’t take long to slip into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “I’ll be ready.”

A few minutes later, she’d straightened her work area, hung her dress on a hanger so that the wrinkles could fall out and turned out the lights in the shop. Pulling the door closed, she fit the key into the lock and turned it, checking before she walked away to make sure the lock had caught and held.

There was little breaking and entering in Moriah’s Landing, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious, especially since she only managed the shop for the owner. One day she hoped to buy it, but for now she was content to have a job she enjoyed.

Picking up her pace, she turned off of Main Street and onto a narrow unlit side street. It was the one secluded area on her short walk home. It didn’t really frighten her, but still she always picked up her pace when she started down it. The lots on either side of the road belonged to one of the Pierces, but they had never built here.

The wind blew in from the ocean, sharp and damp and prickling her flesh. Not a great night for a carnival, but she was relieved not to be staying home tonight. The chilling presence that had haunted her all day began to swell into an almost palpable sensation as she rounded the last corner and walked beneath a canopy of tree branches and shadows.

If she believed in witchcraft, she would fear she was one, and that the chill inside her predicted the imminence of danger or death.

If she believed. But she didn’t.

DAVID BRYSON WALKED the rocky path along the edge of the craggy cliffs and stared down at the swirling water as it crashed against the treacherous rocks below. Once the sight had filled him with awe and excitement. Now it was only a bitter reminder that it was the place where he had lost his world.

Some claimed he’d also lost his sanity that horrible night five years ago, and perhaps they were the ones who understood best.

Instinctively, his hand moved to his face, and his fingers traced the jagged lines of the scar that ran from his right temple to below his ear. The facial disfiguration, his conspicuous limp and the hideous patches of coarse, red skin on his chest and stomach were always with him to remind him of the explosion.

Still, the plastic surgeons had worked wonders, rebuilt his face, transformed him from something so ghastly he couldn’t bear to pass in front of a mirror to something merely hideous. The doctors had saved his life even while he’d begged them for the release of death. To this day, he’d never fully forgiven them.

“Dr. Bryson.”

He turned at the sound of his name and located the lone figure standing behind the Bluffs. The man was no more than an outline in the deepening darkness, but David didn’t have to see his butler to recognize him. He knew the voice well.

He waved and called up to him. “I’m down here, Richard.”

David took one last look at the water below him, then tilted his face and examined the turbulent layers of dark clouds before starting back up the rocky path.

Too bad about the gathering storm, but if the carnies were lucky, it would hold off for a few hours. The carnival had been a highlight of the fall season for years, coming to town just after the students at the all-girls college of Heathrow had plunged into the sea of sorority activities and before they became immersed in serious studies.

Memories sneaked into his mind. A kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel, Tasha’s body pressing into his as they spun on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

A ragged ache tore at his insides. He fought it by pushing his body to the limits, ignoring the stabbing pain in his right leg and jogging up the slippery path that ran along the edge of the cliff. In minutes, he’d covered the ground between him and Richard and stopped at the man’s side.

“You risk your life when you do that, sir.”

“What do you expect from a madman?”

“Indeed. You’re no more mad than I am.”

“You need to get out more, Richard. Mingle with the townspeople. They’ll tell you what an insane monster you work for.”

“I take no stock in the tales of people who walk around in fear that some old ghost is going to rise from the cemetery and kill their virgins.”

“Ghost tales are good for tourism.”

“They’re the invention of superstitious fools. There’s evil in this town, cruelty, too. But it doesn’t come from ghosts or witches.” Richard turned and started back toward the house. David followed him, wondering as always what he’d do without the man.

Richard Crawford had come to work for him five and a half years ago when David had returned to Moriah’s Landing and purchased the Bluffs. Richard’s hair had grayed around the ears since then and receded from his forehead, but he was still fit and youthful for a man who’d celebrate his sixtieth birthday this year.

More important, Richard was probably the only one who understood how much David still loved his dead fiancée. He missed Tasha’s voice, her smile, the way she’d made him feel. She’d been so young and innocent. And beautiful.

“…dinner?”

“I’m sorry, Richard. Did you ask me a question?”

Richard turned and raised an eyebrow. “Is something the matter, sir?”

“I was just a bit preoccupied. Nothing new.” He’d told Richard repeatedly that he didn’t need to refer to him as sir, but the man was from the old school, and even though he was as much friend and confidant as servant, Richard always made certain to keep that defining edge of separation between them.

“I asked if you were ready for dinner,” Richard repeated. “The cook’s gone for the day, but she left everything in the oven. It will take me only a few minutes to serve it.”

“Dinner. I’d almost forgotten that we hadn’t eaten.”

“I think you would forget to eat entirely, sir, if someone weren’t around to remind you.”

“I might at that. It’s my work that keeps me going these days.” His work and a new fascination, one that frightened him even more than the impenetrable moods that had almost destroyed him after Tasha’s death. One that he would never dare mention, not even to Richard.

“Will you be going out tonight, sir?”

“Maybe later. First I plan to go back to the lab and work.”

The question was ritual. The answer was automatic. After dinner, he either went to his office in the dark corridors beneath the rambling castle or to the test tubes and microscopes that filled the west wing of the Bluffs. He’d work until his mind was numb and fatigue robbed him of the control that kept his inner demons in check. Then he’d lose all perspective and turn into the madman every one believed him to be.

He’d slip from the confines of the Bluffs and drive to the edge of town. He’d park his car and walk the streets and back alleys, searching endlessly for answers he never found. One day he would. And when he did, revenge would be swift and unbelievably sweet.

Becca Smith was not part of the answers or the revenge. But lately, he’d ended up on her street far too often. Something about her haunted him, and try as he might, he couldn’t seem to shake her from his mind.

Richard paused at the back door. “I hear the whole town is gearing up for the Fall Extravaganza. Perhaps you should go. One night of fun won’t ruin your reputation as a serious scientist.”

He touched his fingers to the scar. “I’d frighten the children.”

“With one little scar? I seriously doubt that, sir.”

“With one ghastly scar. I suppose I could dig out the mask I wore in the first years after the explosion and go as the Phantom.”

“Just go as yourself. I predict you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

David turned away. “Moriah’s Landings has always had lots of surprises for me. Only one was ever pleasant, and in the end, it was the cruelest surprise of all.”

“That was five years ago. Besides, test tubes make lonely bedfellows.”

“True, but they never pull away in disgust when I stand in front of them.”

David pushed through the door and stepped inside the bleak interior of the Bluffs. Nothing but grays and browns and thick, opaque draperies. Tasha had planned to redecorate the place, fill it with light and brighter fabrics to compliment the richness of the dark woods of the furniture.

Her plans had died with her. Without Tasha, there was no light. Besides, he’d lost all interest in the structure that had so intrigued him when he’d purchased it. Now he spent most of his days in the lab or out staring at the water breaking over the treacherous rocks at the foot of the jagged cliffs.

A bleak and isolated life. But a few miles away, the carnival was in full swing. Coeds’ laughter, painted horses, music, a kaleidoscope of colors. And for the first time in five long years, he felt himself almost wishing he were part of it.

He closed his eyes for a second as Richard walked ahead of him toward the kitchen. He expected Tahsa’s face to materialize in his mind, but this time it was the image of Becca Smith that danced behind his eyelids. Tall and willowy, her long blond hair falling around her shoulders.

He’d have to be very careful if he left the house tonight. And he knew he’d leave. The town was already beckoning.

“STEP RIGHT UP. All you have to do is break three plates to win a prize. Or give me the prize you have walking next to you, and I’ll hand over all the stuffed bears I own.” The hawker tipped a faded baseball cat at Becca as she and Larry walked past his booth.

“Keep your bears,” Larry said. “I know a good thing when I see one.” He grinned and wrapped his right arm around Becca’s shoulder, slowing so that Kat and Jonah could catch up with them.

“Do you want a bear?” Jonah asked Kat. “I pitch a mean fastball.”

“Let’s see. A bear or a beer? I’ll take a beer.”

“Aw,” the hawker groaned. “She’s only kidding. Every woman wants a teddy bear. Or how about one of these cute pink cats? Come on, ladies. Help me out here.”

A large drop of rain plopped on the tip of Becca’s nose, the first of the evening. “Looks like our luck is running out,” she said, quickly forgetting the hawker, who was already rescuing his best prizes from the unprotected edge of his booth.

“Head for Wheels,” Jonah said, indicating the biker bar down by the wharf. “It’s the closest cover.”

The four of them took off running, leaving the lit area of the carnival behind and heading toward the wharf as the rain grew harder. They cut over to Waterfront Avenue by dashing down the street between the ice cream parlor and the fortune-telling stand, both of which had closed for the evening.

A gust of wind coming off of Raven’s Cove blew rain into Becca’s face and whipped her clothes against her body before they finally reached the overhang in front of Wheels. They stomped the mud from their shoes and pushed through the door of the bar to a loud twanging of guitar music from the aging jukebox.