The Lady Has a Past (Burning Cove #5) - Amanda Quick Page 0,24

that whoever called her is someone from her past.”

Irene tapped her pencil against the notebook. “It’s too late to telephone those East Coast newspapers. The offices will all be closed. But I’ll start contacting the morgues first thing in the morning.”

“The next step is to pay a visit to the Labyrinth Springs Hotel and Spa,” Simon said.

“Yes,” Luther said. “At the moment it’s our only lead. I’m coming with you.”

Oliver spoke up quietly. “Bad idea.”

“He’s right,” Lyra said. “You should not go to Labyrinth Springs, Mr. Pell. Not yet.”

Luther scowled. “Why the hell not?”

Lyra folded her arms and regarded him with a cool, commanding air. It was the look of a woman who was accustomed to giving orders and having them carried out.

“This is Raina Kirk we are dealing with here,” she said. “We don’t know for certain that she went to Labyrinth Springs, and if she did go, we don’t know why. There are, however, some things we do know. First, she wanted to keep her actions a secret from all of us. Second, if she doesn’t want us to know what she is doing, she will not welcome Mr. Cage and you barging into her personal business like a couple of maddened bulls entering a bullring.”

Simon blinked. “Maddened bulls?”

“Figure of speech,” Lyra said.

“My gut tells me Raina is in serious trouble,” Luther said.

“My intuition tells me the same thing.” Lyra inclined her head. “But if that’s true, there is even more reason to approach this situation with caution.”

Luther shot her a fierce look. “Got a better idea?”

As far as Simon could tell, Lyra was not intimidated.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said. She turned to Elena Torres. “Would you please telephone the Labyrinth Springs Hotel and see if you can get a reservation for me for tomorrow night? It’s about a four- or five-hour drive. I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I should be there around noon at the latest. I’ll put a sign in the window of Kirk Investigations today explaining that the office is closed for the rest of the week.”

Elena gave her a knowing look and reached for the phone. “Will you be using your real name?”

“Good question,” Lyra said. “I need a cover name.”

“Cage,” Simon said. “Make the reservation in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Simon Cage. Newlyweds. We’ll want the honeymoon suite if it’s available.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lyra said, stunned.

“It’s the perfect cover,” Simon said.

What the hell am I doing? he thought.

Chapter 11

Raina surfaced from the hallucinations with the sense that she was alone. She knew the feeling well, because she had spent much of her adult life alone. She had not realized how empty her world had become until she moved to Burning Cove. There, in the warmth of the California sun, she had begun to discover the treasure of friendships with people she felt she could trust. In Burning Cove she had met Luther Pell.

Burning Cove and Luther and her new friends had given her the ultimate gift: the promise of belonging; the promise of home. But she was a woman with a carefully buried past. She had always feared that one day the specters of that past would rise up out of the grave. Now her nightmare had become real and she had to face it the same way she had everything else in her life—alone. She had to protect Luther and her new friends at all costs.

She suppressed the last fragments of a vision in which she was falling into a whirlpool of hot, violet-colored light and fought to take stock of her situation. A few vague memories flickered and sparked. The door of the hotel room opening. Terrifying monsters leaning over the bed—no, not monsters. Men with their faces covered in the rubber masks that were used in spas and salons to smooth wrinkles. She remembered her frantic struggle to get off the bed and escape. Broken glass. Darkness. Endless darkness. The rumble of a car engine. The strap of her handbag in her fingers. Fumbling with the clasp. More hallucinations.

Panic.

And then a vision of Luther reaching down into the violet whirlpool, trying to grasp her hand. But she kept falling . . .

She opened her eyes and discovered she was in a bedroom. Not the room she had been booked into at the hotel. She was lying on a large four-poster bed. The faint, lingering scent of a familiar perfume clung to the quilt and the pillowcases. It was the same fragrance