In Close

In Close

Brenda Novak

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Claire O’Toole’s mother, Alana, went missing fifteen years ago. That was big news in Pineview, Montana, the kind of town where nothing much ever happens.

Then, last year, Claire’s husband, David, died in a freak accident—after launching his own investigation into Alana’s disappearance.

Is Alana dead? Or did she simply abandon her husband and daughters? Claire is determined to find out—and her former boyfriend, Isaac Morgan, wants to help. Although their relationship didn’t end well, he still has feelings for her. And yet it isn’t until he starts to suspect David’s death wasn’t an accident that he’s drawn back into her life.

Together, Claire and Isaac search for answers to the questions that have haunted Pineview all this time. But as they soon discover, someone’s prepared to kill so those answers won’t be found…

Praise for the novels of Brenda Novak

“[Inside brings out] the edgier side of Brenda Novak’s talent.… You’ll definitely find yourself wanting more.”

—Suspense Magazine

“I instantly knew I was reading a great—not good—great book, when the day came to an end and I’d consumed over half of it… The first book of Brenda Novak’s I’ve read, Inside did not disappoint. If all her books are written to this caliber, I can’t wait to get my hands on more.”

—Leafs & Bounds (book review blog)

“A compelling, suspenseful story filled with nonstop action…a definite page-turner.”

—RT Book Reviews on Body Heat

“Novak expertly blends romantic thrills, suspenseful chills, and realistically complicated characters together in a white-knuckle read that is certain to keep readers riveted to the last page.” —Booklist on White Heat

“Brenda Novak has written the best high action thriller of 2010.”

—Midwest Book Review on White Heat

“Gripping, frightening and intense…a compelling romance as well as a riveting and suspenseful mystery…Novak delivers another winner.”

—Library Journal on The Perfect Liar

“Strong characters bring the escalating suspense to life and the mystery is skillfully played out.

Novak’s smooth plotting makes for a great read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dead Right

“Any book by Brenda Novak is a must-buy for me.”

—Reader to Reader Reviews

To Louise (LouBabe) Pledge, a reader I knew only via email for a long time, who has turned into a cherished friend. Thank you for all your enthusiasm for my books and the massive support you have given my efforts to raise money for diabetes research. You’re one in a million!

Dear Reader,

I love old mysteries. Maybe that’s why I’m such a fan of cold case programs. I can’t stand unanswered questions, so I enjoy vicariously experiencing the resolution of such cases and the satisfaction that resolution brings to all the people involved. If something mysterious happened to my friend or loved one, I’m the type of person who’d dig and dig and dig and never give up, never be able to let go. So I completely identify with the heroine of this novel, Claire O’Toole, whose mother, Alana, went missing while Claire was in high school. I enjoyed exploring how that event shaped Claire’s life. I also found it fascinating to consider what might’ve happened to Alana and to come up with a list of possible suspects, including Claire’s stepfather, who was so good to Claire while she was growing up; her crippled sister, with whom she has a strained relationship; the man with whom Claire’s mother might’ve had an extramarital affair; even a few surprise contenders. This case is particularly hard to solve. It’s quite a challenge for Claire—and so is the man who decides to help.

Isaac Morgan has overcome great difficulty himself, which is partly what makes him a perfect match for Claire. She’s exactly what he needs, if only he can figure out how to open his heart again.

Part of the fun of creating this novel was imagining the small town of Pineview, Montana. This area is unique—so different from where I live in California. I’d love to own a cabin in the Chain of Lakes area, where I placed my fictional town. Maybe someday I will (if I can ever talk my husband into leaving suburbia).

I would like to extend a special thanks to Becky Kranz for purchasing the chance to name a character in this book via one of my annual online auctions for diabetes research. She chose the name Carrie Oldman, which you will see in the story. Like every other person who’s helped me raise money for this important cause, Becky is a hero to me.

For more information about me or my work, please visit www.brendanovak.com. There, you can enter my monthly contests, see what’s coming out next or participate in my annual online auction for diabetes research, which runs for the entire month of May. To date, we’ve raised over $1.4 million!

All the best,

Brenda

Contents

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

1

The tiny cabin Claire O’Toole’s mother had once used for painting had been shut up for years. Claire was the only one who came here, and even she didn’t return all that often, maybe every six months or so.

Braced for the torrent of memories that hit her every time she walked inside, she dropped the key into the pocket of her jeans and forced open a door warped from too many Montana winters. Before she crossed the threshold, however, she looked behind her, suddenly feeling she might not be as alone as she’d thought.

A gentle wind swayed the pine trees. She could hear the rustle as it traveled through the surrounding forest, but she couldn’t see any movement. She couldn’t see anything at all, except for what fell inside the beam of her flashlight. There were no city lights up here, no glassy lake to reflect the moon’s glow, the way there was closer to town, nothing but thick forest carpeted with pine needles, cloaked in darkness and topped with a canopy of stars.

No one was sneaking up behind her. How silly to even check. There were other cabins in these mountains, but only one in the immediate vicinity. Her parents had owned it as well as this studio from when they were first married to the summer before she started school. Then they’d sold the main house and moved to town. She could still remember her mother cooking in that kitchen, the little tree house her stepfather had built in the backyard.

The house had changed hands more than once, but Isaac Morgan owned it now, so she stayed clear. Avoiding it minimized the number of times she and Isaac ran into each other. He filmed wildlife all around the world and was often gone, which helped. Although he lived closest to the studio, she couldn’t imagine any reason he’d be lurking in the trees. They were too busy trying to prove to each other that what they’d had ten years ago had been as easy to leave behind as it should’ve been.

So who else could it be? Her sister, her stepfather and his wife, her best friend and her best friend’s sheriff husband—in fact, nearly all of Pineview’s 1,500 residents—were watching Fourth of July fireworks in the city park across the street from the cemetery. She could hear the distant boom of each explosion, smell the smoke that drifted up against the mountain.

No one had noticed when she slipped away.

Drawing a deep breath, she turned back and focused on the dusty interior. Cast-off furniture from her stepfather, her stepfather’s wife and her maternal grandparents crowded the living room. Cobwebs hung from the rafters; rat droppings littered the floor. Pack rats built nests everywhere in this part of the state, even in the engines of cars.

This wasn’t the magical place it’d been when she was a child. The good memories had been conquered and overrun, broken by tragedy, but she returned, anyway. She couldn’t ignore the studio’s existence and move on, like everybody else. Invariably, the past dragged her back.

As she stepped inside, she paused to listen. She’d expected silence. But she could hear the engine of her old Camaro ticking as it cooled in the overgrown drive. Then a creak, coming from the loft above. When other creaks followed, it almost sounded as if her mother was walking around up there like she used to.

Obviously, Claire’s imagination had kicked into overdrive, reacting to the isolation and the spookiness of coming here after dark.

Or maybe it was her subconscious, trying to get her out before she could come across something that might disrupt what little peace of mind she had left. Her mother had been missing for fifteen years and in all that time they’d never found a trace of her. Her sister had broken her back sledding two years later and been confined to a wheelchair. And David, her husband, had died only a year ago in a terrible hunting accident. She couldn’t tolerate another loss.

And yet she kept digging for the truth.

What if she discovered that her stepfather had killed her mother, as so many others believed? Or what if her mother had run off with another man, willingly left them for a new life somewhere else, as the previous sheriff had suggested?

She’d be devastated. Again. But she couldn’t accept either of those possibilities. Her stepfather was a good man; he would never have hurt Alana. Alana was a loving mother; she would never have abandoned her children. That meant someone had kidnapped her, maybe killed her, and would get away with it unless Claire made sure that didn’t happen. Who else would fight for justice?

Not Leanne. Claire’s sister battled enough challenges. Leanne didn’t even want to think about the day they’d lost their mother, let alone look into it. And her stepfather—Tug, as his friends called him—had moved in with the woman who’d eventually become her stepmother only six months after Alana went missing. At this late date, he wouldn’t have known what to do with Alana even if she reappeared.

Only Claire held on. She was all her mother had left, and that made it impossible to give up, no matter how many people told her she should. Her mother deserved more than that.

At least obsessing about the mystery that had tormented her for half her life kept her from dwelling on David, a loss that was far too recent and still too raw.

Another creak. She almost lost her nerve. Maybe she should’ve waited until tomorrow. But her sister lived in the house right next door to hers and was constantly dropping by. It was difficult for Claire to get away without divulging something about where she was going and what she was doing. And because Claire ran her business, a hair salon, out of her home, if it wasn’t her sister, it was one of her many clients, who paid more attention than Claire wanted. Thanks to her mother’s disappearance, she’d always been watched a little too carefully. Everyone was waiting to see whether she’d recover or fall apart. That was the reason she wanted to move away—so she could be anonymous for a change, start over—a desire that had only grown more intense after David died. Except for two years when their relationship had faltered while he was in college, they’d been together since they were sixteen. Losing him meant becoming the object of everyone’s pity once again.

How are you? You hangin’ in there, kiddo?

She got questions like that, spoken in low, somber tones, all the time. She wouldn’t have minded so much if the people who asked were as sincere as they sounded and not just inviting her to provide them with a bit of tantalizing gossip for the next community gathering or church event. Poor Claire. She’s suffering so. I talked to her last week and…

Claire didn’t need anyone gabbing about her efforts to solve the mystery. Or conjecturing on what she might or might not find at the studio. Or confronting her family with the fact that she’d been here. That was why she kept whatever she could to herself. Why create more curiosity? It would only upset those who’d rather forget....

So, frightening though it was, she liked the cover of darkness. It made her feel as close to anonymous as she could get in the place where she’d grown up. The noises she heard were nothing to worry about. No one would have any reason to hang out in an abandoned studio that didn’t have electricity or running water. If some vagabond had moved in, there’d be proof of occupancy.

Knocking the cobwebs out of the way, she followed the beam of her flashlight through the cluster of furniture. Then she climbed up to the loft, where her mother used to paint. She’d loved watching Alana work, had never felt more at peace than here, with the sun pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the second floor, her mother standing in the light, concentrating on her latest masterpiece.

Several unfinished paintings perched on easels covered with sheets, looking like ghosts floating a couple of feet off the ground. The sight of them made Claire sick with loss, a loss rivaled only by David’s death. Whoever had taken Alana had robbed the world, and Claire, of so much.

Was it someone she knew? Someone she passed on the street, spoke to, cared about? One of those people who always asked how she was?

It had to be, didn’t it? Alana went missing from their house in town in the dead of winter. Although this part of Montana saw an influx of hunters, fisherman and recreationists during the spring, summer and fall, it was not a place to visit in the cold months. Libby, thirty miles away, was the closest town. Notorious for the asbestos mine that’d made everyone sick and caused the death of two hundred people, Libby had been in the news a lot in recent years. But on the day Alana had gone missing, it was still just a spot on the map, and an overturned truck carrying vermiculite ore had blocked traffic on the highway for hours. The sheriff himself hadn’t been able to get through until it was cleared.

Claire supposed some “bad man” could’ve come from the other direction, from Marion or Kalispell, but no one had spotted any strangers that day. Even more significant, there’d been no sign of forced entry at the house. Whoever had taken Alana was most likely someone she trusted. She’d opened her door, never expecting to be harmed.

The betrayal inherent in that scenario made Claire more determined than anything else to solve the mystery.

Dragging a chair from the corner, the very chair in which she used to sit and daydream while her mother painted, Claire climbed up to reach the handle that would open the attic door. Just shy of five foot three, she could barely grab hold, but once she caught it, the pull-down ladder lowered easily enough.

It was warmer in the small space above Alana’s studio. Dustier, too. Claire coughed as she poked her head through the opening and used her flashlight to reacquaint herself with the contents.

Boxes stacked floor to ceiling left little room in which to maneuver. She hadn’t remembered it being quite so crowded. But when it became clear that her mother wasn’t coming back, Claire had insisted that everything Alana owned, down to the razor she’d been using in the shower, be preserved. The sheriff’s department had confiscated the contents of Alana’s desk, her computer, any recent letters she’d written or received, the photos she’d snapped in the months prior to her disappearance, her journal, the things left in her car—anything they thought might help them find her. Claire and Leanne had taken possession of any sentimental items that remained. And the rest had been packed up and stored here years ago, just after Claire graduated from high school and moved out—and her stepfather and his wife bought the luxurious home they currently enjoyed, the home they’d bought with the inheritance Alana had received when her parents died in a plane crash only a year before she disappeared.

Riddled with guilt for even thinking that her mother’s misfortune had provided such a spectacular living for the woman who’d replaced her, Claire steered her mind away from that direction. She liked her stepmother. It wasn’t Roni’s fault that Alana was no longer around.

But it bothered Claire that Roni acted as if Alana had never existed. Tug and Leanne preferred to handle the situation the same way. They’d both asked Claire to forget the past. Learning what happened wouldn’t bring Alana back, they said. And it was true. It was also true that Leanne seemed to do better if she didn’t have to be reminded of that fateful day. Which was why, after pleading for the new sheriff to reopen the case a couple of years ago, Claire had gone back to call him off. Her family had been too upset about the questions he was asking. They couldn’t tolerate the assumptions and suspicions that were inevitable in such a small community.

Claire respected their position. But she couldn’t stop digging entirely. She needed resolution as much as they needed to forget.

What she was hoping to accomplish by coming here tonight, however, she didn’t know. She’d been through all this stuff so many times. Her stepfather, his wife and Leanne had seen it, too. The three of them had packed it together.

But Claire couldn’t help hoping that she’d see something she’d missed before, that some clue would emerge and solve the mystery. That happened all the time on those forensics shows.

Squeezing through the narrow pathway, she moved toward a box that contained her mother’s childhood memorabilia—Alana’s report cards, her early journals, pictures of her family and friends. Claire loved looking through that box because it made her feel closer to the woman she missed so terribly. And it was as good a place to begin as any. She planned on going through every last box, even if that meant frequent trips to the studio over the next few weeks.

She bent to lift it, then saw some boxes that had been packed much more recently. They stood out because they were labeled in her own handwriting. David’s Clothes, David’s Things, David’s Yearbooks.

Her hand flew to her chest as if she could stop that familiar lump from growing in her throat, but she couldn’t. What were her late husband’s personal belongings doing here? She hadn’t expected to find them, wasn’t ready for such a powerful reminder.

One day several months ago, her mother-in-law had come over and packed up everything of David’s, insisting it all be taken from the house. She said that Claire couldn’t get over his death if she was living with his ghost, still sleeping in his T-shirt and crying over the fact that it was beginning to smell more like her than him.

Claire had assumed those things of David’s, except the few she’d managed to retain, had gone into his parents’ garage, but Rosemary must’ve asked Claire’s stepfather to put them here. The two often talked, usually about their concern for her and how she was or wasn’t “coping.”

No one had mentioned that David’s belongings had been moved to this attic, but Claire supposed it was understandable that they would be. Rosemary had a large family and a crowded house. She probably didn’t want to encounter her dead son’s possessions every time she retrieved the holiday decorations. The studio already held what remained of Alana’s life, and nobody ever used it. This must have seemed like the perfect solution.

Closing her eyes, Claire reached out for the warm presence she’d occasionally felt since David’s death. She wasn’t a superstitious person, certainly didn’t believe in ghosts that rattled chains and haunted people, but she did have faith in the power of love to create a bridge between this world and the next. She’d felt some comfort since he died. It was almost as if he visited her now and then to make sure she was all right.

She wished she could feel him now, but the pain was too sudden and too acute. Grappling with it required all her focus.

“Why’d you leave me?” she whispered. The tears that rolled down her cheeks were nothing new. She cursed them, wished she could get beyond them, but the senselessness of his death, the fact that she’d lost David so soon and couldn’t imagine ever loving someone else in quite the same way, didn’t help.

She almost shoved his boxes out of sight, pushed them to the back so she wouldn’t have to see the thick black letters that seared her to the bone: David’s. They were only inanimate objects he’d once owned. As badly as she wanted him, David wasn’t here anymore, and he never would be.

But she didn’t push the boxes away; she pulled them closer. She’d spotted something that struck her as odd. On a two-foot-by-two-foot box, third from the bottom, David had scrawled his own name. She recognized his writing—but not this particular box, which she would’ve noticed since it was white and all the ones she’d used were brown.

Why had she never seen this before? She was positive it hadn’t come from her house....

Once she opened the flaps, she knew why. He must’ve stored this above his parents’ garage before he went to college. If she had her guess, it’d been brought here in an effort to keep all his possessions together.

Fresh longing filled her as she touched the soccer and basketball trophies, the varsity letters he’d never sewn on a jacket, a pen set he’d made in wood shop. Then there were the cards she’d given him when they first started dating. They’d gone to high school together, were an item for two years before he left for college, so she had the same homecoming and prom pictures.

Unable to spend any more time with those memories for fear she’d undo the progress she’d made in the past few months, she began to close the box when she decided to see what was inside a fat accordion-style file folder tucked between some old sweaters. It looked far too businesslike for the seventeen-year-old David who’d packed up the rest of these things....

When she opened it, she realized why. This folder wasn’t from that early period. It was from after they were married. And what it contained shocked her so badly, she had to put her head between her knees so she wouldn’t faint.

Jeremy Salter hung back in the trees, watching. It was pitch-black, but that didn’t matter. The night- vision goggles his father had given him for Christmas worked beautifully. He’d also received a Swiss Army knife—he loved collecting things that would help him survive in the wilderness. He imagined himself as the next Rambo.

But Claire had no survival skills. She didn’t belong out here, especially after dark. If she wasn’t careful, a bear or a pack of wolves could attack her. Or even a man. Men were by far the most dangerous animals on earth.

His father used to say that; his father had also proved it.

She must like it here, he mused. She came often enough. But not so much lately. Not once David was killed. Since David’s death, she didn’t do much of anything, except cut hair all day. Then she’d curl up on the couch, eyes glued to the TV. But he usually got the impression that she wasn’t watching the program. She’d stare at the screen without blinking and soon the tears would start.