The Killing Game(7)

And who’d left it for her?

Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she scurried out to the safety of her car.





Chapter Two



I’ve made my first move. I want my opponent to get a first clue, a small inkling, nudge, worry, that the game’s afoot. I look around my special room and see the boxes of board games from my youth, dusty now from disuse. The old grinder, desktop computer where I once spent hours in play now sits idle. I don’t need any of them any longer.

I dream and strategize and plot. My vision is far in the future.

But there’s much to do.

*

The echoing sound of hammers greeted Andi as she drove along the chunky gravel that made up the temporary driveway to the lodge. The structure currently rose three stories, a skeleton of wood and steel that the framers were pounding at furiously. When the building was finished, the exterior would be shingles, the roof slate, similar in style to the lodge at Crater Lake National Park, though not nearly so grand in size. It had been Greg’s idea for the homage to the 1930s lodge in southern Oregon, and Andi had loved it. Carter had been less enthusiastic about the idea, though he’d acquiesced in the end. Emma hadn’t really cared one way or another, apart from how much it was costing them and when they would see some income.

Carter was already at the site, leaning against his shiny black BMW, ankles crossed, wearing a green golf shirt and tan chinos, his expression unreadable. He turned on a smile when he saw Andi approach, but like always, she got the feeling it was an effort for him. Greg’s little brother could be charming, but he was a shade too impressed with his own good looks for its spell to last long, except maybe on the string of pretty and vacant girlfriends he had as a retinue. He was smart, though, and had kept the project on track since Greg’s death. Andi wasn’t really sure what Carter thought about the lodge and lake community as a whole. Meanwhile, his sister could offer well-thought-out insights, at least when she was sober and when she was interested, but that was less and less lately. Today she was nowhere in sight as Andi pulled to a stop and got out.

“How’re you doing?” Carter asked.

“Fine.”

The note was fresh on her mind and she wanted to tell someone, anyone, about it. She opened her mouth to do just that, but then Carter asked lightly, “No recent blackouts?”

The words shriveled on her tongue. “What?”

“The blackouts. Since Greg’s death? Oh, come on. It’s the f*cking elephant in the room.”

Her heart started pounding painfully. “I’ve lost focus a few times. I didn’t realize it was such a problem.”

“You don’t remember passing out in the conference room?”

“Carter!” She almost laughed, but then realized he was deadly serious.

“Andi, you were out for fifteen minutes. Emma thought you were drunk, but then, she thinks everyone’s drunk.”

“It wasn’t fifteen minutes.” Andi recalled the strangeness, the dizziness . . . and yes, the disorientation in the conference room. “I was dehydrated . . . I lost time . . . I was . . .” Pregnant.

“This is why, Andi. This is why you can’t run the company like I know you want to.”

“I don’t want to run the company. Where do you get that? But I’m majority stockholder and yes, I want to be a part of it.”

“It’s hard enough with Emma, and she’s family.”

Andi felt her face grow hot. He was exaggerating, but she should have told her doctors about her lapses in focus. “I’ve been to a doctor,” she said.

“Good. What’d he say?”

“She said there’s nothing wrong.” A lie, but she wasn’t about to tell him the truth.

“Your guru shrink tell you that? You need to go to a real doctor.”

“Dr. Knapp is a psychiatrist,” Andi answered tightly, “and I didn’t see her anyway. Where’s Emma?” she asked, looking back toward the road.

“Did you check Lacey’s parking lot as you drove by?”

Lacey’s was a shitkicker bar about a half mile from the lodge on the north road. It had scarred wooden chairs and tables, a clientele with a taste for Jack Daniel’s and hot, oily fries, country and western music on the jukebox, and a tiny outside area for smokers that was always in high demand.

“I didn’t come that way. I came from my cabin.” She’d rather eat larvae than say anything about the note now.

“Ah, the cabin. It’s yours now?”

“I’m moving in this weekend.”

“You sure you’re all right?” he asked, peering at her in a penetrating way.

“You’re the one in a bad mood.”

“You noticed. Well, no shit. You’re late, Emma’s God knows where, and I’ve got a meeting with Harlow Ransom this afternoon.” When Andi didn’t immediately respond, he said, “The county planner?”

“I know who he is.”

“Somebody’s gotta knock some sense into his head. If Ransom has his way, we won’t be able to subdivide the larger lots and those North Shore cabins’ll remain the squatter palaces they are.”

He was specifically referring to a series of cabins similar to the one Andi had just purchased that had been sold to Wren Development in a block. No one had done any upkeep on them since the 1940s and they were all still standing by the grace of God. The Carrera brothers had made an offer for them, but the cabins’ cantankerous ninety-year-old owner had bullishly resisted, selling out lock, stock, and barrel to the Wrens before suffering a fatal heart attack.