And the sightings hadn’t stopped with Gramps. Bronco’s father, too, a man of the cloth, had sworn he’d seen the ghost, though Bronco thought Jasper Cravens’s glimpse of the apparition had been the result of his affection for rye whiskey rather than an actual viewing of a bedraggled spirit. And hadn’t he once, while sneaking through these very woods, thought he’d caught sight of a pale, ghost-like figure darting through the underbrush?
He’d told himself the apparition had been a figment of his imagination, but now, the thought of any kind of wraith caused the hairs on the back of his arms to ripple to attention.
“A crock,” Bronco reminded himself just as he spied a deer, a damned white-tailed doe, bounding through a copse of spindly pine.
He made his way toward the back of the house, through weeds and tall grass to the listing veranda that stretched across the rear of the house and offered a view of the terraced lawn and bend in the river. Quickly across the rotting floorboards, he walked to the side door, the one his grandfather and the rest of the staff had used. He slid the key from his pocket, sent up a prayer for good luck, then slipped the key into the lock. A twist of his wrist and . . . nothing. The key didn’t budge.
“Shit.”
He tried again, forcing the key a bit. Shoving it hard.
Once more the lock held firm.
“Goddamn it!” Just his luck. After waiting all this time, after planning and hoping and . . . this always happened to him! In an instant he saw his decades-long dream of wealth disintegrate into dust. Maybe he’d have to break through the old plywood covering the windows. But that would take too long, be too noisy.
“Fuck it.” He wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. Setting his jaw, he jammed the key in again, then suddenly stopped. This was all wrong.
He’d watched the old man do this a hundred times.
He remembered his grandfather babying the lock.
Bronco tried again but didn’t force the key in hard, “gentled it,” as Gramps used to say. Like dealing with a hotheaded woman, son, you got to tread softly, touch her gentle-like.
“Come on. Come on—”
Click!
The bolt gave way and the door creaked open.
He was in! Quickly, his heart hammering, his nerves strung tight, he stepped into a small vestibule with a narrow set of stairs running up and down and a door leading into the kitchen. He headed down the curved steps to find another door at another landing. Unlocked, it swung open easily to reveal yawning blackness and a horrid stench that seemed to waft upward in a cloud. Nearly gagging, he pulled a rag to cover his mouth from one pocket and a small flashlight from another. God, the smell of rot and decay was overpowering. He switched on the flashlight and descended the final flight to step into three or four inches of water, black and brackish and thick with sludge.
This better be worth it.
He skimmed the standing water with the beam of his flashlight and tried not to think of what creatures might nest down here—rats and gators and water moccasins or black widows hidden in dark places.
Don’t go there. Don’t think about what could be living down here. Concentrate, Cravens. Find the loot and get the hell out before you get caught.
Ducking beneath raw beams black with age, rusted hooks and nails protruding, he slogged through years of forgotten furniture, books, pictures, all ruined and decaying. The flashlight’s beam skated over the water and mud, across broken-down chairs and crates stacked atop each other.
A spider web brushed his face and he felt a skittering of fear slide down his spine.
This place was getting to him. Too dark, too smelly, too . . .
Scritttcch.
He froze at the sound.
What the hell?
His heart went into overdrive, thudding wildly.
He whirled, swinging the beam of the flashlight past a listing armoire to . . . oh, shit! A dark, disjointed figure stared back at him!
Bronco jumped backward, startled. Automatically he reached for his Roger. Someone was down here! A weird apparition that, too, was staring at him while scrabbling for a weapon and pointing a beam of a high-powered flashlight at his face. Reacting, Bronco fired just as he realized his mistake.
Blam!
The dirty mirror shattered.
His own distorted image splintered into a hundred shards of glass that flew outward, glittering crazily in his flashlight’s beam. “Shit!”
A rat squealed and scurried between several stacks of boxes.
Freaked, Bronco took aim at the rodent but stopped himself before pulling the trigger. The damned rat was the least of his problems. If anyone had heard the gun go off, they’d come and investigate. Shit, shit, shit!
“No way,” he said under his breath. He just had to work faster.
Get in. Get out.
That was the plan.
Gramps had said there was some sort of hiding space at the southeast corner of the foundation, a deeper cache where he’d seen Beulah Beaumont hide her valuables.
So find it already.
Pushing aside a bike with flat tires propped against a post, he kept moving, still bent over as he stepped around a pile of empty bottles that had been stacked near the brick foundation. He ran the beam over ancient bricks stacked nearly four feet tall that made up the foundation. Carefully, he eyed the mortar, searching for any cracks and—in a second he saw the seam. Partially hidden by an ancient armoire, he noticed a flaw in the design where the pattern of the bricks changed.
The old man hadn’t lied.
With renewed effort, he held the flashlight in his teeth and shoved one shoulder against the armoire, shoving the heavy chest to one side, wedging it tight against a stack of stained boxes. Sure enough, the seam was the outline of a small door cut into the bricks.
He just had to figure out how to open it. He had no more keys, no crowbar, but as he shined his light over the seam in the bricks, he ran the tips of his fingers over the rough edges of the mortar.
No knob.
No pull.
No handle of any kind.
Damn.
There had to be a way.
More carefully he touched the edges of the seam again but . . . nothing. “Come on, come on,” he muttered in frustration.
No one said it would be easy, but he could use an effin’ break.
Thump, thump, thump, thump!
The noise thundered through the basement.
Bronco froze.
What the hell?
Oh, shit! Someone was running across the porch!
No!
Had he closed the outside door? Locked it behind him?
Hell, no!
Crap!
Why was anyone out here after the damned storm?
In one motion, he ducked, dimmed his flashlight and raised his gun, his eyes trained laser-sharp on the foot of the stairs, where only the faintest shaft of illumination was visible. Sweat drizzled into his eyes.
Could he really do it?
Kill a man? Or a woman? Or a damned kid?
Crap, crap, crap!
Heavy breathing, more thumping as whoever it was rounded that final landing.
Oh, Jesus. Someone heard the shot! That’s what it was!
Bronco’s finger tightened over the trigger.
In a blur of motion a shadow leaped from the final steps.
He fired—Bang!—and caught a glimpse of shiny fur as an animal yelped as if in pain, or scared and out of his mind.
No! His stupid dog! Jesus Christ, he’d just killed his damned dog!
The shot was still ringing in his ears but still, he heard a pitiful whine and scrambling paws. “Boy . . . here, boy.”