He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Elizabeth thought she must have died and gone to heaven

He tasted her with his lips and his tongue, and when she arched her back, he groaned, a deep, dark, sensual sound that sent a thrill coursing through her veins.

She plowed her fingers through Cullen’s hair, holding him close, thinking to herself, I always wanted my first time to be with you.

Cullen lifted his head. She went still. Surely she hadn’t said that aloud. Had she?

“This is your first time?” He sounded almost angry.

“That can’t come as much of a surprise,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

Cullen pulled back, resting on his knees. “It changes everything.”

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Elizabeth Douglas—An expert in criminology, she’s standing in the way of a killer’s ultimate revenge.

Detective Cullen Ryan—A man with a dark past of his own. He vows to protect Elizabeth from the killer, but can he protect her from himself?

Professor Lucian LeCroix—He arrived in Moriah’s Landing on the night the first body was discovered.

Dr. Paul Fortier—He has an eye for the ladies—especially his students.

Dr. Leland Manning—A pioneer in gene therapy research. What, exactly, is the nature of the experiments he conducts at his isolated compound?

David Bryson—A recluse, he was a suspect twenty years ago in the killings that terrorized Moriah’s Landing. Has his grief for a lost love driven him to do unspeakable evil?

Ned Krauter—The town mortician, he’s a man who enjoys his work.

Dr. René Rathfaster—A brilliant researcher, he disappeared several years ago when allegations surfaced that he conducted genetic experiments on human test subjects.

Geoffrey Pierce—How does he know so much about serial killers?

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

Cupid’s bow is loaded at Harlequin Intrigue with four fabulous stories of breathtaking romantic suspense—starting with the continuation of Cassie Miles’s COLORADO SEARCH AND RESCUE miniseries. In Wedding Captives, lovers reunite on a mountaintop…unfortunately they’re also snowbound with a madman!

And there’s no better month to launch our new modern gothic continuity series MORIAH’S LANDING. Amanda Stevens emerges from the New England fog with Secret Sanctuary, the first of four titles coming out over the next several months. You can expect all of the classic themes you love in these stories, plus more of the contemporary edge you’ve come to expect from our brand of romantic suspense.

You know what can happen In the Blink of an Eye…? Julie Miller does! And you can find out, too, in the next installment of her TAYLOR CLAN series.

Finally, Jean Barrett takes you to New Orleans for some Private Investigations with battling P.I.’s. It’s a regular showdown in the French Quarter—where absolutely anything goes.

So celebrate Valentine’s Day with the most confounding mystery of all…that of the heart.

Deep, rich chocolate wishes,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in a small, Southern town, Amanda Stevens frequently draws on memories of her birthplace to create atmospheric settings and casts of eccentric characters. She is the author of over twenty-five novels, the recipient of a Career Achievement Award for Romantic/Mystery, and a 1999 RITA Award finalist in the Gothic/Romantic Suspense category. She now resides in Texas with her husband, teenage twins and her cat, Jesse, who also makes frequent appearances in her books.

Secret Sanctuary
Amanda Stevens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is gratefully dedicated to B.J. Daniels,

Dani Sinclair and Joanna Wayne,

my partners in crime as well as my friends.

Special thanks and acknowledgment

are given to Amanda Stevens for her contribution

to the MORIAH’S LANDING series.

Contents

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

Prologue

The sky had been clear all day, but as evening fell, storm clouds moved in from the sea, blocking fragile moonlight and deepening shadows across a bleak and eerie landscape. The wind had picked up, too, stirring dead leaves over the necropolis.

There was something in that wind, Elizabeth Douglas thought with a shiver. Something evil.

She glanced at the luminous dial on her watch. Almost midnight. Time for the ghosts to rise….

She and her friends huddled just inside the cemetery walls as they gazed in trepidation at the shadowy formation of headstones and crumbling mausoleums. Silhouetted against the darkness, marble angels stood with bowed heads and furled wings, celestial sentinels as cold and silent as the graves they watched over.

Elizabeth didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be anywhere but here. Spending the night in St. John’s Cemetery as part of a sorority initiation was just plain crazy, not to mention against the rules. They’d all be in big trouble if the school got wind of what they were doing.

“Do you think we’ll see Leary’s ghost tonight?” Claire Cavendish asked nervously. A pale, slender girl, she was even more skittish about the coming night than Elizabeth. Claire jumped as the heavy, iron gates clanged shut behind them in the wind. “They say he rises every five years.”

“Oh, come on,” Kat Ridgemont scoffed. “You don’t really believe all those stories about ghosts and witches, do you? That stuff was made up just to attract tourists. None of it’s true.”

“What about those women who were murdered in Moriah’s Landing fifteen years ago?” Claire challenged. “Did they make that up, too?”

“Claire!” Brie Dudley warned in a low voice.

Claire clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, Kat. I’m so sorry. I forgot.”

Kat shrugged. “It’s okay. I forget sometimes myself.”

But Elizabeth didn’t think that was true. Kat’s mother was thought to be the first victim of a serial killer who had terrorized Moriah’s Landing fifteen years ago. Before his gruesome reign ended, three more young women had lost their lives, and Elizabeth knew that in spite of what Kat said, her mother’s death still haunted her. The killings haunted the entire town because the murderer had never been caught.

Gooseflesh prickled the back of Elizabeth’s neck. She fervently wanted to believe they had nothing to fear tonight—from the killer or from Leary’s ghost—but she couldn’t seem to shake her disquiet.

But at fifteen, she was the baby of the group. The other girls were 18, and Elizabeth was always conscious of the age difference. She wasn’t about to be the first to suggest they turn back.

“Elizabeth?”

She blinked as the beam of someone’s flashlight caught her in the face.

“You okay?” Brie asked worriedly. “You’re being awfully quiet. You haven’t said a word since we got here.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I’ve just been thinking.”

Kat glanced over her shoulder. “About McFarland Leary?” she teased.

“Who else?” Elizabeth tried to say lightly, but her tone sounded a bit defensive even to her.

“You believe in ghosts, too, don’t you?” Claire whispered beside her.

Elizabeth hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she believed in. She just knew there were things in this world that couldn’t be explained.

“Look!” Tasha Pierce said on a breathless whisper. “There it is!”

Tasha and Kat were in front, and they came to a stop as Tasha angled her light over Leary’s grave. Weather and time had worn smooth the face of the headstone, until all but a faint trace of carving remained. But they knew it was Leary’s grave.

Lightning flickered overhead as wind gusted through the cemetery. Shivering, Tasha tucked her blond hair inside her collar. “We’d better get started before the storm hits.”

The girls dropped to their knees, forming a circle around the grave. Tasha placed her flashlight in the center, then removed an ornate wooden box from her backpack and held it up to the light.

“Inside are five scrolls,” she intoned solemnly, her voice rising over the wind. “All but one are blank. Whosoever chooses the image of McFarland Leary must enter the haunted mausoleum. Alone.”

Elizabeth was the last to draw. The others had waited for her, and now they all unrolled the tiny scrolls they’d each selected.

Beside her, Claire gave a horrified gasp. She held up the slip of paper so that everyone could see the etching of McFarland Leary.

Of all the girls, Claire was the least prepared to enter the haunted crypt alone. She was the most sensitive, the most easily frightened.

Elizabeth swallowed back her own fear. “I’ll go in your place, Claire.”

“No,” Brie said. “You’re the youngest, Elizabeth. I’m not letting you go anywhere alone. I’ll go.”

“I will.” Tasha wadded up her scroll and stuffed it in her pocket. “This graveyard is full of Pierces. They’ll protect one of their own.”

“I say none of us go.” Kat slammed the box shut and glanced around the circle. The wind whipped her black hair straight back from her face, making her look almost otherworldly. “They can’t make us do this. Hazing went out with the Dark Ages.”

There were murmurs of assent all around, but Claire shook her head and got to her feet. “It’s not really hazing. Not the bad kind anyway. It’s a tradition, and besides, I don’t want to be the cause of any of us getting blackballed.”

Kat scowled. “Who gives a flying—”

“I care,” Claire said softly. “I can do this. I need to do this. I’ll be fine.”

Ignoring their protests, she picked up her flashlight and headed toward the ancient, crumbling mausoleum. In the intermittent flickers of lightning, Elizabeth could see a broken cross silhouetted against the stormy sky.

Slowly, Claire climbed the stone steps, opened the door, and then, glancing back only once, stepped through the dark portal. For a moment, they could see her light playing off the walls, and then the door creaked shut behind her.

“I’m going in there with her.” Kat started to get to her feet, but Tasha grabbed her hand.

“No, wait. Maybe this really is something she wants to do on her own. Besides, we’ll be right here if she needs us.”

“Then we have to do our part,” Brie said. “Are we all agreed?”

“Agreed,” Elizabeth murmured, but guilt washed over her because as frightened as she was for Claire, a part of her was glad she wasn’t the one inside that crypt.

“Once we join hands, the circle must not be broken,” Tasha warned. “Physically or mentally.”

Elizabeth squeezed her eyes closed as the girls joined hands, forming a protective circle as they summoned the natural forces of earth, air, fire and water to guard Claire from the ghosts of McFarland Leary and any other evil creatures who might roam the night.

But for just a split second, Elizabeth’s mind wandered, and she thought about Cullen Ryan, a boy she’d had a crush on for ages. In trouble with the law, he’d dropped out of high school the year before and left town in the middle of the night. Elizabeth had no idea where he’d gone, or if she would ever see him again. But she prayed that wherever he was, he was safe, too.

And at the very moment when her concentration was weakened, when the spiritual circle was broken, thunder cracked overhead and a scream ripped through the darkness.

Claire!

The girls scrambled to their feet and raced toward the mausoleum. The door was stuck at first, but Kat managed to shove it open. The beam of her flashlight chased away shadows and shimmered off cobwebs suspended from the ornate ceiling. The scent of death and decay permeated the air, but there was no sign of Claire.

Elizabeth’s heart started to pound with a terrible fear, a horrible premonition. She knew what had happened. While she’d been thinking about Cullen, the protective circle had been broken. The evil had been allowed in, and now Claire was gone.

And it was all Elizabeth’s fault.

Chapter One

Five years later…

Elizabeth peered through her rain-spattered windshield as she wended her way around the curving drive toward the lighted mansion. February-bare oaks reached skeletal arms across the narrow lane, entwining with one another to form a natural arbor through which only thin tendrils of light could creep. The night was very dark.

Comprising well over a hundred acres of landscaped grounds, the Pierce compound—hidden from prying eyes by eight-foot, ivy-covered stone walls and thick stands of evergreens—was a masterpiece of design and privacy. The focal point was a lavish brick colonial owned by William and Maureen Pierce, the town’s most prominent citizens.

A Pierce ancestor had founded Moriah’s Landing in 1652, and the descendants had lived there ever since. The family remained active in many areas, most notably politics and science. Rumor had it that William and Maureen’s lavish masquerade ball tonight was not only to continue the celebration that had begun on New Year’s Eve to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the town’s founding, but to help launch their eldest son’s first political campaign.

Elizabeth liked Drew Pierce well enough and she thought he’d make a fine mayor, especially considering she didn’t particularly care for the current one, Fredrick Thane. But in spite of the gossip regarding Drew and the potential for fireworks when Mayor Thane made his appearance at the ball, Elizabeth wasn’t looking forward to this night. She’d never been particularly adept at socializing, and a masked ball was a little out of her league.

But then, disguising herself as someone other than who she truly was might not be such a bad thing, she decided. A seventeenth-century noblewoman, dressed to kill in a lavish gold ball gown with a plunging neckline, might know how to seize the moment—should one present itself—as Elizabeth Douglas never had.

She tugged at that neckline, discomfited by the amount of cleavage showing. Her new WonderBra, she decided, was truly that.

A bolt of lightning temporarily blinded her, and she slowed the car. Dark, roiling clouds hung low on the horizon, and over the sound of her car engine, she could hear the ominous rumble of thunder.

Earlier, when the first raindrops had pelted the roof of her cozy cottage, she’d hurried over to the window to stare out, thinking with a fatalistic shrug that, naturally, it would storm tonight. It always stormed in Moriah’s Landing on momentous occasions—such as, she’d been told, on the night twenty years ago when Kat Ridgemont’s mother had been murdered. And fifteen years later, on the night Claire Cavendish had vanished from the old haunted mausoleum.

Claire had been found in the cemetery several days later, her body tortured, her mind so tormented she hadn’t been able to tell anyone what had happened to her. She’d resided ever since in a mental hospital a hundred miles west of Moriah’s Landing, and every time Elizabeth drove up to visit her friend, she was stricken with guilt.

Which wasn’t rational, she knew. There was nothing she could have done to save Claire that night. She and the other girls had never even seen who took Claire. To this day, the authorities still didn’t know how the assailant had managed to get inside that mausoleum, subdue Claire and carry her off without anyone having seen anything.

At first, the girls had been under a cloud of suspicion—a sorority initiation ceremony gone terribly awry. But they were all so distraught, so terrified that the police had finally believed their wild tale.

To think that any of them would have done such a horrible thing to poor Claire….

Rounding a sharp curve, Elizabeth was momentarily facing eastward, and in the distance, she caught a glimpse of the Bluffs, a towering stone castle perched on the edge of a steep cliff that fell sharply away to the sea. It was there, on the jagged rocks below the castle, that Tasha Pierce had met with a horrible fate of her own, only one month after Claire had been found. It had been storming that night, too.

First Claire and then Tasha.

There were only three of them left, Elizabeth thought. She, Kat and Brie. And poor Brie hadn’t exactly led a charmed life. She’d had to drop out of college after becoming pregnant, and she’d struggled ever since to take care of her fatherless child and her ill mother.

Elizabeth frowned. Sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if they’d unleashed something terrible that night. Something evil. Sometimes she wondered if she and Kat would be next.

But then, Kat had already suffered. Her mother had been murdered when Kat was only three years old, and the killer had never been apprehended.

That left only Elizabeth.

As lightning fired the eastern sky, the castle came into sharp relief for just a split second. It was miles away, but Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a dark figure lurking on one of the turrets.

David Bryson, she thought with a shiver. The man who might or might not have killed her friend, Tasha.

Pulling up in front of the Pierce mansion, Elizabeth waited as two valets came rushing toward the car to meet her. One carried an umbrella which he used to shield her from the rain when she stepped outside, and the other climbed behind the wheel to park her new Audi. Elizabeth winced as the tires squealed against the wet pavement, but to her credit, she didn’t look back. Instead, she wrapped her velvet cloak more tightly around her as she hurried up the granite steps.

As if of their own accord, the massive oak doors swung open, and Elizabeth stepped inside. Her cloak was removed from her shoulders, and she took a moment to arrange the shimmering folds of her gown. When she glanced up, she caught her breath.

She’d been to the mansion before, but it had been a long time ago, before Tasha’s death, and Elizabeth had forgotten the elegance of the place, the sheer opulence.

A set of inlaid marble steps led down to an immense, sunken hall with a chessboard floor of black and white. Directly across the foyer, a magnificent staircase was crowned by a ten-foot cathedral window through which sunshine would pour in the daytime. Tonight, however, lightning flickered through dark clouds as rain slashed against the glass.

Below the window, the staircase split, curving gracefully on either side of the landing to a spacious gallery, brilliantly illuminated by crystal chandeliers and wall sconces that danced like candlelight.

To the left of the foyer, another set of double doors opened into a ballroom, and Elizabeth glimpsed the dazzling swish of costumes as swaying bodies seemed to float over the dance floor.

It was like stepping back in time. The women were adorned in glittering jewels and swirling silk ball gowns from another era, another century, while the men were festooned in everything from military uniforms to brocade breeches and powdered wigs.

And the flowers! Every hothouse from Moriah’s Landing to Boston must have been emptied to accommodate such glorious arrangements, most of them done in red and white in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, although the celebration had very little to do with the holiday. Red and pink cyclamens hovered like butterflies around a colored fountain that had been set up near the buffet tables, and heart-shaped candles floated in the water among fragrant rose petals and gardenia blossoms.

A more romantic setting, Elizabeth couldn’t imagine, and here she was, dateless as usual.

As she lingered in the hall, reluctant to join the throng, a woman dressed in a gorgeous blue gown and an elaborate mask of peacock feathers drifted out of the ballroom toward her. The woman lowered the mask, and Elizabeth smiled, happy to see a friendly face.

Although she didn’t know Rebecca Smith all that well, the two had hit it off when Elizabeth had gone into Threads, a design shop in town that Becca managed, looking for her costume. Becca had gently but firmly steered her away from the more austere designs that Elizabeth had automatically gravitated to and talked her into a golden fantasy concoction with a tight-fitting bodice that laced up the back and a skirt that swirled about her ankles when she walked.

Elizabeth raised her own swan-like mask to her face and pirouetted for Becca. “Well,” she said. “How do I look?”

“Breathtaking,” a male voice said behind her.

Elizabeth whirled, her gaze going immediately to the man who stood at the top of the entryway steps. He’d just come in from the rain, and the shoulders of his black cape glistened with moisture. He shrugged out of the heavy mantle, handing it to the butler without a glance, his gaze never wavering from the two women who stood below him in the foyer. He was dressed all in black, like a phantom, and the golden mask that covered one side of his face was at once hideous and beautiful.

As he slowly descended the stairs, Elizabeth had to fight the urge to step back from him. There was something about him…

“My name is Lucian LeCroix,” he said in a voice as dark and liquid as the night. Before Elizabeth had time to catch her breath, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“Pr-professor LeCroix?” she finally managed to stammer.

The brow on the unmasked side of his face lifted. “Why, yes. Don’t tell me we’ve met. I’m certain I would have remembered.”

“No, we’ve never met,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “But I knew you were coming. We’ve been expecting you.”

The brow lifted again. “We?”

“The staff at Heathrow College. You’ve come to replace Dr. Vintner, correct?” Ernst Vintner, the chairman of the English Department, had died suddenly from a massive coronary a few weeks ago. Instead of promoting one of his own tenured professors, Dr. Barloft, the college president, had hired the protégé of an old family friend. Professor LeCroix came with impeccable credentials, but Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling a measure of resentment. She had friends among the faculty who should have had that position.

Professor LeCroix was still holding her hand, and Elizabeth pulled it away. She lifted her chin slightly. “My name is Elizabeth Douglas. I teach courses in criminology at Heathrow.”

“Dr. Douglas,” Becca said.

If he was surprised by Elizabeth’s title and her age, Lucian LeCroix managed to conceal it. “I’d say this is certainly my lucky night then. I was hoping to meet a colleague or two at this gathering, and here you are, the first person I see. Now if I can convince you to take pity on me and show me around campus tomorrow, I will, indeed, be a fortunate man.”

When Elizabeth hesitated, he rushed to add, “If you’re free, of course. I realize I’m being presumptuous, but I’ve just driven up from Boston today, and I haven’t had time to get my bearings.”

Elizabeth still wavered. She didn’t much want to commit her whole Saturday to a complete stranger, and yet professional courtesy demanded that she grant him the favor. He was new in town and a colleague. And after all, did she really have anything better to do with her weekend? There was laundry, of course. And papers to grade.

And Elizabeth had to admit that Lucian LeCroix, from what she could see beneath the mask, was a very handsome man. He looked to be about thirty—ten years older than she—with black hair and dark, piercing eyes.

She could certainly do worse than be seen around campus with the charming new professor, she decided. Maybe then her students would stop calling her Sister Elizabeth behind her back, a reference not so much to her saintly qualities but to her lack of experience in earthly pleasures. How teenage girls could so quickly and accurately—and quite often viciously—size up their teachers remained a mystery to Elizabeth.

But then, so much of life was a mystery to Elizabeth.

Chapter Two

Over his shoulder, Cullen Ryan watched the rain batter the plate-glass window in the Beachway Diner as Brie Dudley topped off his coffee.

“Thanks,” he mumbled absently, then turned back to the counter when she said something in response. “I’m sorry?”

She held the steaming coffee carafe in one hand as she gazed out the window behind him. She was a slim, pretty woman with curly red hair and the most amazing green eyes Cullen had ever encountered. “I was just commenting on the weather.”

“Yeah,” he agreed gloomily. “Not a fit night out for man nor beast, as they say.”

“It’s been an odd winter,” Brie mused. “No snow, just rain. And now this thunderstorm. But what else would you expect on the 350th anniversary of this town’s founding, right?”

Cullen shrugged. He wasn’t given to superstition, and he didn’t put a lot of stock in the supernatural tales that had been passed down for generations in Moriah’s Landing. But he was glad anyway that he’d turned down the moonlighting gig as security guard at the Pierces’ big bash tonight. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts, but he’d hate like hell to be patrolling the perimeter of that huge compound, chasing away gatecrashers and sightseers and probably more than a fair share of local hoodlums looking to have a little fun and put a damper on a celebration that had excluded them.

And he should know about that type because he’d once been there. He’d been a founding member of the gang of misfits who hung out down by the wharf, decked out for trouble in their chains and chin studs and serpent tattoos. He’d once worn some of those same badges of rebellion with a fierce, misplaced pride that had almost been his downfall, but now he wore a different kind of badge. And no one was more astounded by the way he’d turned his life around than Cullen.

Funny what sleeping on the street could do for a man’s perspective, he thought ironically. He’d learned a lot during his years in Boston, some of which had changed him forever and some of which he didn’t much care to dwell on. It was the kind of person he was today that mattered, he tried to tell himself.

“We used to call a storm like this a widow-maker,” Shamus McManus said as he turned to glance out the window. Shamus was a seasoned fisherman who’d once worked on the same boat as Cullen’s father. Cullen had known the old geezer for years, and he knew better than to sit next to Shamus if he didn’t have time for a story or two.

Besides Cullen and Shamus, the only other patron in the diner was Marley Glasglow. Dressed in a yellow rain slicker, he sat at the end of the counter, hunched over his coffee as if totally absorbed in his own thoughts. Glasglow was probably around forty, but he looked much older, a big, burly guy with a sour disposition and no visible means of support other than the few odd jobs he picked up down at the docks.

“We lost many a good man at sea on a night like this,” Shamus was saying. He paused, then gave Cullen a sly glance. “A night like this can bring McFarland Leary out of his grave.”

Cullen laughed. “Oh, come on now, Shamus. Don’t tell me you believe in that old ghost story.”

Shamus’s expression turned dead serious. “I’m sixty-five years old, lad. When a man lives as long as I have, he sees things.”

“You’ve seen Leary’s ghost?” Cullen challenged.

Shamus shrugged. “I might have. They say he rises every five years. It’s been that long since anyone’s seen him.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting to see Leary’s ghost peering in the window.

For the first time all evening, Glasglow looked up from his coffee, his eyes burning with an intensity that made Cullen wonder about the man’s sanity. “Leary fell prey to the evil that’s been the downfall of man since the beginning of time.”

“And what evil is that?” Cullen asked skeptically.

“He was seduced by a woman.”

Behind the counter, Brie bristled. “I hope you’re not implying that all women are evil.” When Glasglow refused to deny it, she said, “If women are so evil, why are most of the truly awful things in this world perpetrated by men? Why are the most vicious killers on death row almost always men? How do you explain that?”

Glasglow eyed her for a moment. “Most men kill because of a woman.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Brie exclaimed. She glanced at Cullen who shrugged.

“Leary was suspected of being a warlock so he was hanged on the town green,” Shamus put in. “He comes back every five years because he has unfinished business in this town.”

“Yeah,” Glasglow muttered. “Revenge.”

“Not revenge,” Shamus said with a frown. “He’s searching for the offspring of his unholy union with a witch. And the offspring of their offspring.”

Cullen shook his head. “You’ve lost me, Shamus. Leary haunts this town every five years because he’s looking for his great-great-great-great-grand-children?”

“Aye, and he’s not the only one searching for his kin,” Shamus said. “Have you never wondered why so many scientific types settle here in Moriah’s Landing?”

Amused by the old man’s ramblings, Cullen swiveled his stool to face him. “No, I can’t say as I have. Are you suggesting it has something to do with McFarland Leary’s descendants?”

“Aye, and the witch’s.”

“Be careful, old man,” Glasglow warned. “You go sticking that nose of yours where it doesn’t belong, you’re apt to get it chopped off.”

“Is that a threat, Marley Glasglow?” Shamus squared his shoulders, as if preparing to throw down the gauntlet. Glasglow was at least twenty years younger and thirty pounds heavier than Shamus, so Cullen decided he’d better step in before things got out of hand.

“The storm’s getting worse,” he commented. “Maybe we’d better all call it a night.”

Brie threw him a grateful smile. “I think you’re right, Cullen. I was thinking about asking my boss if we could close early.”

“You’re throwing us out on a night like this?” Glasglow glowered at her.

Brie shrugged. “It’s only an hour till our regular closing time at ten. You’d have to leave then anyway.”

“And if I refuse?”

Cullen walked over and put a hand on Glasglow’s shoulder. “If you refuse, I have a nice cozy jail cell you might find to your liking.”

Glasglow shoved his cup aside and stood, facing Cullen. At six feet, Cullen was tall enough, but Glasglow towered over him by a good four inches. And like Shamus, Cullen was outweighed by the man, but he knew how to deal with thugs. He’d dealt with plenty of them on the streets of Boston.

He moved slightly, so that Glasglow could glimpse the automatic he wore in a shoulder holster beneath his coat.

Glasglow eyed the gun for a moment, then his gaze met Cullen’s. “You’ve got me shaking, boy.”

Cullen’s stare never wavered. “Maybe you should be.”

“Considering the track record of our fine police department?” Glasglow sneered. “I’m not too worried.” He walked over to the front door and drew it open. An icy gust swept through the diner, and Cullen saw Brie shiver.

Lifting the hood of his slicker over his head, Glasglow stood in the doorway for a moment, staring out into the rainy darkness.

Then he glanced over his shoulder, his gaze resting on Brie. “The police never could find who killed those women twenty years ago. I doubt much has changed since then. If you ever find yourself in trouble, girl, I wouldn’t be looking to the likes of him for help.”

He nodded toward Cullen, then he turned and disappeared through the doorway into the night.

“TELL ME about that castle that overlooks the sea,” Becca said as she and Elizabeth watched the elegant dancers swirl about the floor in the ballroom.

“You mean the Bluffs?”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Becca’s gaze was still on the dancers, but she looked pensive, subdued. Elizabeth wondered if something had happened during the course of the evening to disturb her.

Except for their brief conversation in the foyer when Elizabeth had first arrived, she’d seen little of her friend all night. Becca had drifted away after Lucian LeCroix had come in, leaving Elizabeth alone with the handsome professor. They’d talked for a few minutes longer, making arrangements to meet at the library on campus the following morning for his tour, and then Lucian—as he insisted she call him—had excused himself to join the party as well. Elizabeth had been standing alone in an unobtrusive corner for the past hour or so. She was glad that Becca had sought her out again.

The music ended and as the couples drifted toward the fringes of the room, Elizabeth caught a glimpse of LeCroix. He was talking to Drew Pierce, but she could have sworn his gaze was on her.

It was probably her imagination, she decided. A bit of wishful thinking that a man as handsome and debonair as Lucian LeCroix would look at her twice. Since they’d spoken earlier, he hadn’t approached her again. If he was gazing in her direction now, it was probably because of Becca.

Becca was blond and beautiful while Elizabeth was just…Elizabeth.

Lizzie, as Cullen Ryan used to call her. Elizabeth thought that one word, that hated nickname, spoke volumes about the way he saw her.

“Elizabeth?” Becca touched her arm.

With an effort, Elizabeth drew her attention back to the conversation. “Sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, yes. The Bluffs. It was brought over from England, stone by stone, by one of the Pierce ancestors, but a few years ago a man named David Bryson acquired it. There’s been bad blood between him and the Pierces ever since. And, of course, there was Tasha.”

“Tasha?”

“Natasha Pierce.” At the thought of her dead friend, a cloak of sadness settled over Elizabeth, but she tried to shake it off. She didn’t really want to talk about Tasha or David Bryson, but Becca was new in town, and it was only natural she’d be curious. “Her family never approved of David. Apart from the animosity over the Bluffs, they thought he was too old for her. She was only eighteen when they became engaged, and David was in his thirties. She died one night in a terrible boating accident, and her body was never found. Since then, no one’s seen David, although they say he walks the night. Supposedly, he was horribly scarred in the explosion, and that’s why he became a recluse. That, and his guilt. The more charitable in town think he’s still grieving for Tasha. Others say…well, never mind what others say. It’s all a bit creepy, if you ask me,” Elizabeth finished with a shudder.

“I think it sounds terribly romantic,” Becca said softly. “I’d like to meet this David Bryson.”

“No,” Elizabeth said in alarm. “You don’t want to do that. Don’t even think it. I lost one dear friend who got mixed up with that man, and I wouldn’t want to lose another.”

Becca laughed. “Who said anything about getting mixed up with him? I only said I’d like to meet him.”

“If you want to meet someone,” Elizabeth said firmly, “there are a lot of nice guys here tonight. Take Drew Pierce, for instance. He’s handsome and he’s very rich. Most women find him totally irresistible.”

“Yes, I’ve met Drew,” Becca said in a dismissive tone. Obviously, for some reason, the town’s most eligible bachelor held no particular appeal for her. But David Bryson? No, Elizabeth thought. No, no, no!

“Besides,” Becca was saying, “If there are so many nice guys here tonight, why are you standing here talking to me? I haven’t seen you dance once all evening.”

“Oh, that’s because…”

Becca lifted an elegant brow. “Yes?”

Elizabeth waved absently toward the orchestra. “I don’t really care for this kind of music.”

Becca gave her a speculative glance. “I realize we don’t know each other all that well, but would you mind if I offered you a piece of advice?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Of course not.”

“You’re a beautiful girl, Elizabeth. Very warm and caring. I’ve seen that side of you in the short while I’ve known you. But most of the time you seem so aloof. Especially around men. If you could just be a little more…approachable, you’d have them climbing all over each other to ask you to dance.”

Elizabeth glanced at her in surprise. “Who says I want to dance?”

“Every girl wants to dance,” Becca said with a misty smile. She hesitated. “You know what I think? I think you use your aloofness and even your intelligence as a sanctuary. A safe place to hide away the real you so that you won’t get hurt.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t deny it because there was too much truth in it.

“I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Becca asked worriedly.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just…”

“We don’t know each other well enough to exchange such intimacies.”

“It’s not that, either,” Elizabeth said. “I do feel as if I know you, and I hope we can be friends. But I’ve never been comfortable sharing confidences even with my closest friends.”

“I can understand that. We all have things we want to keep to ourselves.” A shadow moved across Becca’s lovely features, making Elizabeth wonder what secrets she might harbor. “Well,” she said with a bright smile that seemed a bit forced. “It’s almost midnight. Maybe I should take my own advice and mingle before I turn into a pumpkin.”

Elizabeth didn’t think that would happen. She knew very little of Becca’s life before she came to Moriah’s Landing, but it was obvious the woman knew how to handle herself in social situations. Elizabeth watched with no small amount of envy as her new friend drifted through the crowd with the utmost confidence. She seemed perfectly comfortable in her surroundings even though she knew hardly anyone at the ball.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, had grown up in Moriah’s Landing and while her parents weren’t as wealthy as the Pierces, her life had been one of privilege. She should be the one at ease in such a setting, but she wasn’t. She longed to be home, snuggled in bed with one of her favorite books, the way she spent most of her evenings. If she wasn’t careful, she could easily become a recluse.

Like David Bryson.

THE CLOCK in the foyer struck midnight just as Elizabeth slipped out of the ballroom. She’d meant to seek refuge inside the library across the hall, but instead, she made her way to the rear of the house where a glass-domed solarium would give her a breathtaking view of the storm.

She opened the door and stepped inside. The room was dark and fragrant with exotic blossoms, and very cold. Elizabeth didn’t turn on the light, but used the occasional flashes of lightning to make her way toward the back of the solarium, where long rows of French doors opened onto a flagstone patio and garden.

She rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms, wishing for her velvet cloak. Surely such a chill couldn’t be good for the tropical varieties of plants and ferns which grew jungle-thick beneath the glass dome.

As she neared the back of the solarium, Elizabeth realized why the temperature had plunged inside the room. One of the French doors had blown wide, and gusts of icy wind and rain whipped through the opening.

She rushed over to fasten the door, but it resisted her tug. As she struggled with the latch, something moved outside beyond the patio. A flash of color, nothing more. A brief flare of yellow that melted into blackness.

Then the wind slammed the door to with such force that Elizabeth had to jump back to keep her hand from being smashed. She slipped on the wet floor and lost her balance, crashing backward into a plant table. Expensive glazed pots shattered against flagstones.

She struggled to sit up, but the hoops beneath her voluminous skirts kept her off balance.

“Damn,” she muttered, wincing as a shard from one of the shattered pots bit into her palm. She lifted her hand to see if the cut was bleeding, but for some reason, her gaze was drawn skyward. Among the trailing leaves of some lush vine, something swayed from the rafters.

Elizabeth propped herself on her elbows, staring upward. What was that—

In a flare of lightning, she saw a pale face staring down at her.

A ghost! her terrified mind first thought, and her heart began to hammer painfully against her rib cage.

But then, an instant later, she saw the rope.

Chapter Three

“Who found the body?”

The curt question broke into Elizabeth’s chaotic thoughts as she stood outside the solarium with the Pierces. She looked up, expecting to see one of the uniformed officers who’d arrived on the scene a few minutes after William Pierce had called the police, or perhaps even the police chief himself. Instead, her gaze collided with Cullen Ryan’s.

And her heart almost stopped.

She hadn’t seen him this close since he’d moved back to Moriah’s Landing several months ago. Elizabeth thought she’d conquered her old feelings for him once and for all, but then he’d gone and done the unexpected. The unthinkable. He’d gone and made himself respectable.

And now she was all confused again. She stared up at him helplessly.

His short, dark hair glistened with raindrops, and his eyes—gray, like a winter sky—were cool and assessing. He wasn’t overly tall, probably around six feet, but he carried himself in that edgy, confident manner which had always made him seem taller. He was dressed darkly in a heavy long coat over a black V-neck sweater and black jeans, and Elizabeth couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was so good-looking!

And a young woman was so dead.

Elizabeth would do well to remember why Cullen was there. She tried to convince herself that her reaction to him was due to her lingering shock, not just in finding the body but in discovering the victim’s identity. And it had been a shock.

Once she’d turned on the light in the solarium, she’d recognized almost at once the pale face, the dark, flowing hair. The delicate features that remained winsome even in death.

And with recognition had come the shakes. Elizabeth had started to tremble violently, and she hadn’t been able to stop. Someone had fetched her velvet cloak earlier, and she clutched it now like a lifeline. She opened her mouth to answer Cullen, but her teeth were chattering so badly she couldn’t speak.

William came to her rescue. “Elizabeth found the poor girl. It’s been quite traumatic for all of us, as you can imagine.”

When Elizabeth had first informed William and Drew of her grisly discovery, they’d tried to leave the ballroom discreetly, so as not to alarm or panic their guests. Luckily, Mayor Thane had already departed the ball. Otherwise he would have undoubtedly insinuated himself into the situation in such a way as to garner as much press for himself as possible—and conversely, as much unfavourable publicity for his potential rival as he could generate. Bad enough that Zachary, Drew’s younger brother, noting the grim expression on his father’s face, had followed them to the solarium and a few minutes later, Geoffrey Pierce, William’s brother, had shown up as well. Now that the police were on the scene, word would spread soon enough among the guests, if it hadn’t already.

William stepped forward now and offered his hand to Cullen. “I’m William Pierce, by the way.”

“Yes, I know who you are,” Cullen said without expression as he shook hands with the man. “I’m Detective Ryan.”

William glanced over Cullen’s shoulder. “Where’s Chief Redfern? Shouldn’t he be here?”

“He’s out of town, but he’s been notified. The roads in and out of Moriah’s Landing are a mess from the storm. It may be hours before he can make it through.”

William frowned. “Shouldn’t we wait for him?”

“I’m afraid we can’t wait. Deterioration of the body could break down any DNA evidence that might be present. We’ll need to collect samples as soon as Dr. Vogel arrives,” Cullen said, referring to the medical examiner.

“What about the state police?”

“This is our jurisdiction.”

“I see.” William still didn’t look convinced. “That all sounds well and good, young man, but you haven’t been with the police department all that long, have you? Are you sure you have the experience for this sort of investigation?”

Annoyance flitted across Cullen’s brow. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. Pierce, but I assure you I’m a trained investigator.”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you seem a little young to me to be a detective.”

He was twenty-four, Elizabeth thought, and age was relative. She knew that better than anyone.

If Cullen had remained with the Boston Police Department, chances were he probably wouldn’t have made detective for another few years. But in Moriah’s Landing, any big-city police-force experience automatically propelled an officer to the head of the pack. Most of the other law-enforcement personnel, Chief Redfern included, had only spotty experience and the minimum amount of training required by the Commonwealth. Whether William Pierce realized it or not, the town was lucky to have Cullen.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said coolly.

“I hope you do.” There was an indefinable edge in William’s voice. Was his concern really due to Cullen’s age, or because of Cullen’s background? Before he’d left town, Cullen had had more than one brush with the local authorities. The charges were never anything too serious—vandalism, joy-riding, crimes of that nature, and because they could never be proven, the complaints were invariably dropped. But people had never had any doubt about Cullen’s guilt, and they always suspected those petty misdemeanors were a prelude to something more serious, something potentially more deadly.

Did William Pierce harbor doubts about Cullen’s transformation as so many others in town did?

Elizabeth didn’t. Not really. She’d always known there was a good side to Cullen. He’d just never allowed anyone to see it.

What was it Becca had said to her earlier? You use your aloofness and even your intelligence as a sanctuary, a safe place to hide away the real you so you won’t get hurt.

Had Cullen’s juvenile delinquency been his sanctuary? Elizabeth wondered.

He was staring down at her, watching her closely, and her breath caught painfully in her throat. Would she never get over this silly crush? This terrible yearning that caused every nerve ending in her stomach to quiver if he so much as glanced at her?

“You’re the one who found the body?” he asked her.

She nodded, buying herself a moment to collect her poise. “Yes, in the solarium. Her name is Bethany Peters.”

One dark brow lifted. “You knew her?”

“She was a student at Heathrow College. She was in my Theories of Criminal Behavior class last semester.” Elizabeth tried not to dwell on the irony.

“Was she a guest at the party?” He addressed this question to William Pierce.

“No, none of us had ever seen her before.”

Cullen turned back to Elizabeth. “What were you doing in the solarium?”

She hesitated. “The ballroom was very crowded. I just wanted a chance to catch my breath.” Would he think she’d been dancing all night instead of people-watching from a secluded corner? Instead of daydreaming about him?

One could only hope.

“Why the solarium?”

“It has this wonderful glass dome. I wanted to watch the storm a bit.” The intensity of his gaze made Elizabeth even more nervous. Her hand crept to her throat, and she found herself explaining, “It’s an air mass thunderstorm rather than an organized system, you see, and I wanted to observe the redevelopment of new convection along the outflow of the previous cells.” Shut up, shut up, shut up, she admonished herself, but she couldn’t seem to stop babbling. “The main cell, of course, was well into its dissipating stage by that time,” she finished lamely.

Cullen ran a hand through his short, spiky hair. “Uh, right. Do you have an idea what time you left the ballroom?”

“Midnight. I heard the clock in the foyer chime.” Elizabeth pressed her lips together to keep from blurting out any more irrelevant facts. She had the unfortunate habit of resorting to trivia when she got nervous, and she had always been nervous around Cullen.

“Did you see anyone else in the foyer? In the hallway outside the solarium? Anyone lurking outside?”

“No. Maybe. I’m not sure.” She drew an unsteady breath and told him about the open door in the solarium and the yellow flash she’d seen beyond the terrace. “It might have been nothing more than a reflection. I can’t be sure. I certainly can’t say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a person.”

“If it was, we’re not going to find any footprints in this weather,” he said grimly.

Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around the fastener on her cloak. “I don’t think it very likely, but I suppose it’s possible someone could have been inside the room when I first entered, and then left through that door. I didn’t turn on a light.”

“Why not?”

“As I said, I slipped away from the party to be alone for a few minutes. I didn’t want anyone to see me.”

Cullen’s glance sharpened. “Were you afraid someone would follow you into the solarium?”

As if. “No. I just thought someone might see the light and become curious. And, also, it was easier to observe the storm in the darkness.”

“I see. When you went back to close the door, that’s when you saw the body?”

She nodded. “I lost my balance on the wet floor and fell. For some reason, I looked up and I saw her hanging from one of the steel supports….” Elizabeth broke off, shuddering in spite of herself.

She wasn’t unfamiliar with death. In her Criminal Investigations courses at Heathrow, she taught her students how to dissect crime scenes analytically and view murder victims objectively. As a graduate student, she’d interned with the Worcester Police Department in order to research her doctoral thesis, and just a few months ago, she’d attended a series of seminars conducted by an FBI profiler. She knew crime. She lived and breathed crime.

But when the victim was someone you knew…someone so young…

“I’ll need statements from all of you,” Cullen said to the Pierces who stood clustered behind Elizabeth. “For now, I want everyone to remain out here. We need to keep the crime scene as virgin as possible.”

Elizabeth winced. “I’m afraid…that is, the solarium may already have been compromised.”

“Someone besides you has been in there?” Cullen asked sharply.

“We rushed in without thinking when Elizabeth told us what she’d found,” Drew explained. “She tried to keep us out, but we couldn’t know for certain the girl was dead. We thought we might be able to help her.”

Cullen glanced at Elizabeth. “How many went inside?”

“All of them,” she admitted gloomily.

He shook his head in frustration. “We’ll have to cross-check fingerprints then. I’ll also need a copy of the guest list.” He turned to the uniformed officer who stood directly behind him. “Make sure guards remain at all the exits. No one leaves, no one gets in without my say-so. I don’t care who it is,” he said pointedly at the Pierces. “I don’t care what excuses they give you.”

“Surely you don’t expect everyone to wait around here indefinitely,” Geoffrey Pierce, Drew’s uncle, complained. “I have things to do.”

“At this hour?” Cullen gave him a speculative look. “What kind of things would they be?”

Geoffrey didn’t answer, just stood there looking unpleasant. A tall, slender man with thinning blond hair, he hadn’t managed the approach to middle age with quite the same grace as his older brother, William. And he didn’t seem to have William’s compassion. He was handsome, as all the Pierces were, but something about his expression, about the cruel set of his lips, made him seem at once sinister and weak.

Drew put a hand on the man’s arm. “Detective Ryan is right, Uncle Geoffrey. We screwed up. Let’s not make things worse.” To Cullen he said, “We’ll do everything we can to cooperate.”

“I’m counting on that.” Cullen took a pair of latex gloves from his overcoat pocket and snapped them on. He handed another pair to Elizabeth. “Show me the body, Elizabeth.”

THE FIRST THING Cullen noticed about the solarium was the temperature. The room was still frigid even though Elizabeth said she’d closed the outside door. He could feel the chill though his overcoat, but then, the heavy fabric was still damp from the rain.

He wondered now, as he followed Elizabeth toward the back of the solarium, if he might have been able to prevent the tragedy if he’d accepted the moonlighting job as a security guard for the Pierces. Probably not. So far, it appeared that the murderer had been able to slip in and out without being detected by any of the other guards or guests which suggested to Cullen that the suspect was someone familiar with the Pierce compound. Someone who had either come in the front gate as a guest, or through the back entrance with the hired help.

But that hardly narrowed the field. Party-goers had come from all over the state, and in Moriah’s Landing alone, half the population had either received invitations to the party or been hired to work in some capacity at the compound.

In short, the killer could be anyone, Cullen thought grimly as he tugged at the neckline of his sweater.

The solarium was crowded with plants. Some of the tree ferns grew all the way to the top of the dome while a maze of sinewy vines coiled around the rafters and crept downward, inching away from the sunlight. Hanging baskets trailed lacy fronds that brushed against Cullen’s shoulders, making him think of spiders. He found the atmosphere inside the solarium suffocating, as if the plants were sucking all the air from the room.

Elizabeth had stopped in front of him and was staring at him curiously. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” His tone was more clipped than he’d meant it to be.

She cocked her head, still regarding him. “It’s rather close in here, with all the plants. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

He glanced at her warily. “Claustrophobic?”

“An abnormal dread of being in closed or narrow spaces.”

“I know what it means,” Cullen said dryly. “But only you would put it that way.”

“What way?”

“Only you would use the exact dictionary definition. Word for word, I’ll bet.”

She lifted her chin. “What’s wrong with being precise?”

“Nothing.” She wouldn’t understand even if he explained it to her. People with a high IQ seemed to live in their own little world. “I don’t have claustrophobia,” he said with an impatient shrug. “I just don’t care for all these damn plants.”

“Well, maybe you have botanophobia. Fear of plants.”

“What I don’t have is time,” he snapped. “Let’s get on with this.”

“Of course.” She gave him a cool glance as she turned and walked to the back of the solarium without another word.

Cullen hoped he hadn’t hurt her feelings, but, damn, she could be so annoying. There seemed to be no end to the trivia she’d stuffed inside that head of hers. She’d always been way too smart—and far too superior—for her own good in Cullen’s opinion. That was one of the reasons she’d had so much trouble in school. Bad enough she was such an Einstein, but did she have to rub people’s noses in it?

It was a shame, too, because she wasn’t a bad-looking girl. Cullen supposed that some might even consider her attractive, in a sisterly sort of way. Nice hair. Nice eyes. Slight build.

She’d matured since he’d left town six years ago, but she was still very young. He had a hard time thinking of her as anything other than the bratty little kid he’d tried to protect from the bullies who’d ragged on her in school. Although, to this day, he couldn’t figure out why he’d bothered. She’d made it clear from the first she didn’t want or need help from the likes of him.

Fair enough, he supposed. She wasn’t only brilliant, she was rich to boot. She came from the ritzy part of town, and Cullen had grown up down by the docks. Her parents were scientists; his old man had been a drunk. They didn’t exactly travel in the same social circles, he and Elizabeth.

She’d stopped in front of him again, her head tilted skyward. Cullen glanced up. The body dangled about ten feet from the floor from a steel girder that helped support the glass dome.

Cullen’s blood went cold with shock even though he’d had plenty of time to prepare himself. It didn’t matter how prepped he was or how many times he worked a crime scene, murder always got him in the gut.

Especially when the victim was very young.

She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. Snuffed out by a cold-blooded murderer who’d left her hanging there like a piece of meat in a butcher-shop freezer.

“It’s not a suicide,” Elizabeth murmured.

No, it wasn’t a suicide, he thought grimly.

“I can’t see any wounds,” she added, “But I’m certain she was dead before she was hanged. Otherwise, there would be…visible signs.”

A protruding tongue, for one thing. “How the hell did he get her up there?” Cullen muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth shiver. She’d been the girl’s professor at Heathrow, but he was willing to bet there wasn’t more than a year or two difference in their ages. In spite of himself, he felt his protective instinct stirring again. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have let her come back in here.

“This won’t take long,” he said. “I just need to ask you a few questions about finding the body. I want you to show me where everyone was standing when the Pierces came in here. Tell me about their reactions, what was said, anything like that you can remember. Then you can wait outside with everyone else.”

She turned to stare up at him, her expression earnest. “I’d really like to stay until Dr. Vogel examines the body.”

Cullen shook his head. “That’s out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Do I have to state the obvious? You found the body.”

“But what does—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide. “Are you saying I’m a suspect?”

He shrugged. “Everyone here is a suspect. I’m not ruling anyone out at this point.”

“But—” She broke off again. “Of course. I understand. You have to take that approach. But I really think I can help you. I know about crime-scene investigation. I’m a professional, just like you.”

“Not exactly like me. You aren’t wearing a badge,” he said bluntly. “If you really want to help, just answer my questions. That’s all I need from you.”

She looked as if she wanted to protest, but decided against it. Pursing her lips, she turned her back on him.

He’d probably hurt her feelings again, but it couldn’t be helped. Ph.D. or not, Cullen wasn’t about to involve a civilian in his investigation. For one thing, bringing in an outside consultant was a tricky business. Egos could get in the way, and secondly, he had his reservations about Elizabeth’s competence.

Oh, she was plenty intelligent. No question about that. But it had been Cullen’s experience that no amount of classroom theory or book knowledge in the world could take the place of plain old-fashioned street smarts, the kind learned the hard way. And for all her education and degrees, Cullen doubted she’d ever really been put to the test. After she answered his questions, he’d send her packing.

“There’s a ladder against one of the walls,” she said.

He frowned. “What?”

“You asked how he’d gotten her up there. I saw a ladder in here earlier. Mr. Pierce said it’s used to cut away dead leaves from the vines and the larger plants, and to change the bulbs when the ultraviolet lights burn out.”

“Did anyone touch it that you saw?”

“No. Mr. Pierce suggested his sons use it to cut her down, but I discouraged that. I warned them we had to leave her as we’d found her.”

At least she’d done that right, he thought grudgingly. “We’ll dust the ladder for prints,” he said, ignoring the expectant look on Elizabeth’s face.

He studied the immediate area underneath the body. The floor was a mess with broken pottery scattered about and muddy water all over the flagstones near the French doors. Cullen could see at least one partial footprint in the sludge.

He motioned to the floor. “Was all this here when you came in?”

Elizabeth bit her lip. “The floor was wet, but I knocked over the pots when I fell.”

He’d been afraid of that. “Is that your footprint?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“We’ll have to check it out anyway. We may need your shoes for verification.”

“Of course.”

They both fell silent for a moment, then Elizabeth said softly, “You noticed, didn’t you?”

“Noticed what?”

“There’s no blood on the body or on the floor. And look at the color of her skin. She looks as if she’s been exposed to extreme temperature, but there’s no frostbite.”

Cullen had seen the same thing, but he’d kept his observation to himself. He’d learned a long time ago to make no assumptions.

“My guess is she was killed somewhere else and brought here,” Elizabeth said. “She could have been dead for several days. The killer probably kept her in a cooler or freezer somewhere until the time was right.”

“Meaning?” Cullen glanced at her curiously. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, something about the confident manner in which she spoke had his attention.

“Until he was ready for someone to find her.” Elizabeth’s gaze moved upward, where the body of Bethany Peters stirred gently in a slight draft from a heating vent. “He put her on display. She was left here, like this, for a reason. The killer is trying to tell us something.”

Cullen knew instantly what she meant. One-time crime-of-passion killers would only take the time to move the body of their victim in order to dump it in a remote location or to try and throw off the police. They wouldn’t flaunt it. Neither would a professional hit man. There was only one type of killer who would.

Elizabeth turned to Cullen, her eyes deeply troubled. “This is a very bad thing, Cullen.”

His gaze lifted to the body. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.

THE MOMENT the medical examiner arrived, Elizabeth was expelled from the solarium.

“We’ll take it from here,” Cullen told her firmly.

“But I’d like to help—”

“If we need your help, we’ll ask for it.” He must have realized how harsh his words sounded because he almost at once altered his tone. “I appreciate everything you’ve done so far, but this is a police investigation. You need to wait outside with everyone else.”

When she still resisted, his grasp tightened on her elbow. “Come on, Elizabeth. Cut me a break here.”

“But you can’t seriously consider me a suspect,” she protested. “If you’d listen to your brain for a moment instead of your ego, you’d realize I could help you.” She winced. That hadn’t come out at all right. She hadn’t meant to goad him, but somehow, around Cullen, she always managed to say the wrong thing.

“You’ve done quite enough already,” he said coolly.

“If you’re referring to letting the Pierces come into the solarium, I had no authority to keep them out,” she defended. “I’m not a police officer.”

He arched a brow. “Precisely my point.”

“Just let me stay while Dr. Vogel examines the body. I want to hear what he says about cause of death.”

“Out.”

“Cullen—”

“Out.”

He opened the solarium door and gave her an unceremonious little push into the hallway. The door closed firmly behind her.

The Pierces were still in the hallway, and they gazed at her curiously.

“I take it your services are no longer required,” Drew commented.

“Cops can be so…infuriating.” The latex gloves snapped loudly as Elizabeth peeled them off.

“They do tend to have a one-track mind,” William sympathized. “But in this case, I have to agree with Detective Ryan. A murder scene is no place for a young lady.”

“But I teach criminology,” she protested. “I’m not unfamiliar with crime scenes.”

“You can’t be more than a day over twenty years old. Hardly more than a child. If Natasha were still alive, I certainly wouldn’t want her subjected to such a gruesome scene.” Pain flashed in William’s blue eyes, and whatever annoyance Elizabeth had been harboring toward him for his comments about her age vanished. Tasha’s death had affected them all, but especially her family. It was obvious that her father still grieved her passing. That was why he hadn’t been able to forgive David Bryson and probably never would.

But had Bryson been able to forgive himself? Elizabeth wondered. Or had his guilt driven him to do unspeakable evil, as some of the townspeople suspected?

Careful, she warned herself. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you.

They had absolutely no evidence thus far linking David Bryson to Bethany’s murder. Nothing except an innate distrust of the man, and Elizabeth knew she was prejudiced in that regard. Tasha had been her friend.

If she wasn’t careful, such a biased perspective would end up proving Cullen’s point—that she had no place in a murder investigation.

“They won’t find anything,” Geoffrey Pierce murmured in a strange, offhand manner, his gaze on the solarium door. “That girl was dead before she was hanged.”

Elizabeth had come to the same conclusion, but it wasn’t exactly admiration she felt for Geoffrey’s keen perception.

Earlier, when they’d all rushed into the solarium, the other Pierces had been deeply disturbed by the sight of the body, especially Zachary, who’d turned a bit green when his father suggested that he and Drew find a way to cut her down. The same look of horror and compassion had emanated from all the Pierces’ blue eyes—all except for Geoffrey’s.

In his eyes only a cool curiosity had gleamed.

Elizabeth had to wonder about a man, a nonprofessional, who could remain so stoic and unaffected in the face of such horror.

Her gaze on him narrowed. “Why do you think Cullen won’t find any evidence?”

He shrugged. “Because whoever did that knew what he was doing.”

“He?”

“Given your field of expertise, I’m sure you know as well as I do that crimes of this nature are almost always masterminded by white males. Serial killers seem to be a unique affliction to our race and gender.” He didn’t seem especially disturbed by his conclusion.

“Serial killer?” Elizabeth said, feigning surprise. “Who said anything about a serial killer?”

Geoffrey gave her an enigmatic smile. “Don’t tell me the same thought didn’t cross your mind when you saw her hanging there. The way the body was put on exhibition? What else could it be?”

“An act of rage,” Elizabeth said. “A crime of passion.”

He shook his head. “You don’t believe that. You know what we’re dealing with here as well as I do.”

Elizabeth had studied crimes such as this in both her undergraduate and graduate courses. She’d learned a long time ago what it meant when a murderer “signed” his kill.

But she couldn’t help wondering how Geoffrey Pierce knew.

And would another body soon follow that would prove his point?

Chapter Four

The storm had moved out to sea an hour or so earlier, but Elizabeth could still see flashes of lightning in the distance as she sat in her parked car down the street from Krauter’s Funeral Home. The downpour had finally abated into an icy drizzle that glistened on the cobblestone pavement like a scene from a French Impressionist painting.

The hour was very late, after three in the morning, and for a moment, Elizabeth was struck by the eerie silence, the preternatural peace that had settled over the night in the wake of bone-chilling violence.

Cloistered in the leathery confines of her new car, she could almost believe that the last few hours had never happened. But they had. A young woman was dead. A student had been murdered, and Elizabeth had discovered the body. No seminar or classroom or degree in the world could have prepared her for that grisly sight.

She watched nervously as the gleaming black hearse carrying Bethany Peters’s body slowly glided past her. The windows were so darkly tinted in the vehicle that she couldn’t make out any of the occupants, but she knew that besides the driver there was one other attendant. She’d been present at the Pierce mansion when the mortuary people had arrived to pick up the corpse.

Tomorrow, Bethany would be transported to a nearby hospital where an autopsy would be performed, and the cause of death would likely be determined. But for tonight she would remain in a cooler at Krauter’s.

A squad car—flashers blacked out, siren silenced—followed the hearse, and Elizabeth ducked down in her seat even though she was fairly certain Cullen had remained at the mansion. He had hours of interviews to conduct and acres of grounds to search, but he would abandon everything in a heartbeat if he had even an inkling of what Elizabeth was up to.

She tamped down a momentary reservation. Okay, so what she had in mind wasn’t exactly brilliant. Probably wasn’t even a good idea. She would be interfering with an official police investigation. She could be fined, even do some serious jail time if she were caught, but Elizabeth didn’t see that she had any other choice. When she’d approached Cullen again later about examining the body, he’d told her no way. No way in hell, to be exact.

“Just give me one minute, Cullen. That’s all I’m asking for. I need to see the body again. I think I saw something—”

“Saw what?”

“I’m…not sure.”

He ran his fingers through his dark hair, a gesture that was both familiar and endearing—or would have been, if Elizabeth hadn’t been so thoroughly irritated with him.

The feeling, evidently, was mutual. “I don’t have time for this, Elizabeth.”

“Why do you have to be so stubborn? Can’t you just admit you may need my help?”

“With what?”

“The investigation, for crying out loud.”

He gazed down at her for a long, tense moment, his gray eyes cool, remote. Sexy. “Haven’t you ever heard that old saying, Elizabeth? Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

That hurt.

She gave him a disparaging look. “Are you afraid to let me see the body, Cullen?”

“Why would I be afraid?”

“Maybe you think I’ll find something you didn’t.”

His expression became rigid then, and Elizabeth had known she’d gone too far. Again. She’d pressed him way past irritation all the way to anger. Maybe even nudged him into contempt.

“Just stay out of my way, okay? And don’t let me catch you playing Nancy Drew with this case. I’m warning you, Elizabeth…”

Nancy Drew! The nerve, Elizabeth fumed, as she huddled more deeply into her leather seat. Did Nancy Drew have a Ph.D. in criminology? Had Nancy Drew struck up an e-mail correspondence with one of the most famous profilers in the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico? Did Nancy Drew have an IQ of—

Okay, okay, a little voice complained inside her. Enough already. You’re starting to annoy me, for God’s sake.

It was true she never knew when to give up, but Elizabeth had always considered persistence a virtue, not a vice. And she was certain she could help solve this case if Cullen would just give her a chance.

But he was hung up on her age, just like everyone else. If she were a man, if it had taken her the usual amount of time to complete her graduate degree and subsequent field training, no one would question her expertise. No one would think twice about using her on this case.

But she was only twenty, looked even younger, and because of that, Cullen was shutting her out.

Be honest, that same little voice taunted her. Are you really upset because he won’t use you in the investigation, or because he still sees you as an immature schoolgirl? Someone he could never be interested in romantically or…sexually.

Elizabeth sighed. She might as well be a brain without a body for all the male attention she elicited. Unless you counted Dr. Paul Fortier, a biology professor at Heathrow, and since his reputation with the opposite sex was a bit notorious, Elizabeth didn’t think she could consider him a conquest.

Besides, she wasn’t absolutely certain he’d made a pass at her. She’d had a high fever when he’d approached her a few weeks ago after a faculty meeting. It was entirely possible she’d misinterpreted his gesture—and what he’d said to her—but whatever the case, there was something about the man that creeped her out big-time. The way his eyes had seemed to slide all over her when he’d looked at her. The way her skin had crawled when he’d touched her.

Shivering, she rose in her seat and glanced out the window. Tires swished against the wet pavement as the hearse and the police car turned into the drive of the narrow, three-story structure which housed not only the mortuary and crematorium, but the private residence of Ned Krauter, the town mortician.

Out of respect for the dead, or perhaps the late hour, car doors closed quietly as the attendants got out of the hearse and the officer climbed out of the squad car. The three men stood talking for a moment, and Elizabeth let her gaze scan the funeral home.

Windows were lit on the second story of the building where Mr. Krauter resided, and on the ground floor where the mortuary facilities were located.

The third story had been converted into an apartment for lease, and in spite of all the activity below, the windows up there remained dark. Exactly what kind of person would want to live over a funeral home and crematorium, Elizabeth couldn’t imagine, but her concern tonight wasn’t for Mr. Krauter’s lodger, but with Mr. Krauter himself, and how she might be able to sneak into the building without him knowing.

It was a risky proposition, but Elizabeth desperately wanted a closer look at Bethany’s body. Once the postmortem took place, it might be too late. Whatever it was that had disturbed her earlier might be lost forever.

After another moment of quiet conversation, the attendants opened the back doors of the hearse and slid out the gurney. A sheet covering the body fluttered in the wind as the attendants wheeled the gurney to the back door of the mortuary. Once they and the police officer had disappeared inside, Elizabeth got out of her car and ran along the street toward the funeral home, clutching her cloak tightly against her. Now that the storm had passed, the temperature was plummeting, and she could feel the chill seeping into her bones.

As she’d expected, the back entrance had been left temporarily unlocked. Elizabeth opened the door a crack and peered inside. No one was about, so she slipped in.

She’d never been in that portion of the funeral home, but the layout of the house was not unlike that of dozens of other clapboard homes in Moriah’s Landing.

In fact, the entire structure had once been a private residence. Ned Krauter’s grandfather had immigrated from Europe right after the First World War, bringing with him the family mortuary trade which had been passed down for generations. Why he’d left Europe no one seemed to know, but soon after his arrival in Moriah’s Landing, he’d bought the large house for a song from a widow who’d found herself in a desperate financial situation after her third husband had unexpectedly committed suicide.

Krauter had turned the residence into a funeral home, and when he’d died back in the fifties, he’d left his only son a flourishing business which Krauter the Second had, in turn, passed on to his only son, along with an assortment of odd family traits that had been for years the source of no small amount of speculation in Moriah’s Landing.

The current Mr. Krauter had never married and thus had no heir. Elizabeth couldn’t decide whether she considered his childless state a pity or a blessing.

The room she stood in had once been the kitchen of the original residence. The sinks and cupboards had been upgraded to stainless steel, but most everything else had been stripped away. It was now used as a receiving room—the entry point for bodies to the funeral home. There were signs posted in prominent areas which proclaimed that the room met all state and federal requirements for blood-borne pathogens. Although it wasn’t a formaldehyde area, Elizabeth could smell a strong disinfectant that made her slightly queasy.

Several doors radiated from the receiving room, most of them clearly marked. The embalming room, straight ahead. To the right, near where she stood, the crematory. To her left, the coolers. To her far right, an unmarked door that led presumably into the other areas of the funeral home.

It would take only a few moments for the attendants and the officer to transfer the body to one of the coolers, and then they’d come back in here. The officer would probably remain on guard all night, in his squad car she hoped. If he stayed near the coolers or in the receiving area, Elizabeth would have a big problem. But she didn’t think that too likely. People in Moriah’s Landing were nothing if not superstitious, and that included most of the police force.

All she needed to do was find a place to hide until the coast was clear. She surveyed her options once again. The embalming room. The crematory. The unmarked door.

Duh, as her students would say.

Elizabeth opened door number three and cautiously stepped through.

A narrow, dark hallway stretched before her, and she hesitated just inside the door, trying to get her bearings. But it was no use. The corridor was windowless, making navigation highly precarious. Elizabeth hated to use her flashlight, but unless she wanted to stumble around and risk detection, she had no other choice. Pressing the switch, she angled the beam down the hallway.

If she could locate the lobby or the chapel, that wouldn’t be so bad. She could find a pew and sit quietly. Meditate on how much trouble she would be in if Cullen were to find her there.

Maybe he would even threaten her with…dire repercussions. For a moment Elizabeth let herself fantasize about the possibilities.

Then she snapped out of it. Kinky wishful thinking, coming from a girl—a woman—who’d barely even been kissed.

She suppressed a sigh just as a light came on at the end of the hallway and she heard footsteps. Someone was coming down the stairs.

Elizabeth’s heart started to pump in overdrive. There was a door just ahead, and she rushed toward it, the skirts of her costume rustling noisily. She doused her flashlight and melted inside the room just as the footsteps sounded down the hallway.

They came closer. Closer. And then they slowed.

Elizabeth held her breath. She glanced around frantically for a place to hide, but she could see nothing in the darkened room, and she didn’t dare turn her flashlight back on.

The door opened, and she pressed herself against the wall behind it, praying that the abundant folds of her dress would not spill out and reveal her hiding place.

For a moment, her luck seemed to hold. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. Elizabeth didn’t even dare breathe. She stood there, pulse hammering in her throat as she tried to will away whoever stood on the other side of the door.

And then the light came on, and she blinked, certain that she’d been caught. When her eyes became accustomed to the blinding glare, she glanced around.

Whoever stood in the doorway did not come into the room, but Elizabeth wasn’t alone.

Not five feet from where she stood squeezed against the wall, a woman she didn’t recognize rested peacefully in a satin-lined coffin.

“Good night, Mrs. Presco,” a voice whispered from the doorway.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Elizabeth crept from the funeral home lobby where she’d been hiding and glanced down the hallway. The light at the end of the corridor had been extinguished once again when Mr. Krauter had gone back upstairs, and as far as Elizabeth could tell, the coast was clear.

Earlier, she’d waited in the viewing room with Mrs. Presco just long enough for the door to close and for Mr. Krauter—presumably the visitor—to disappear down the hallway toward the receiving area where he’d undoubtedly gone to oversee the arrival of Bethany’s remains.

While Elizabeth had been scrunched behind the door in the viewing room, she’d tried to tell herself there was nothing wrong with Mr. Krauter conversing with the dead. It was rather…sweet.

But images had started to form in her head, visions that had made her break out in a cold sweat. She’d barely allowed Mr. Krauter time to get to the receiving area before she’d opened the door of the viewing room and all but tumbled into the hallway. Then she’d found herself a new place to hide until she’d heard him return to his living quarters upstairs.

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