Motive: Secret Baby

“That’s him!” a voice shouted from the dark perimeter of the yard.

Raven’s Cliff’s finest had kept the mob off Nicholas’s property to this point. The small crowd loitered at the roadside, the moon spotlighting their angry demeanors. Keeping them that far away couldn’t have been an easy task.

Murmurs and more shouts rumbled through the crowd, most directed to one another.

“You brought back the curse!” a man shouted as he pushed past the deputy struggling to restrain the crowd. “All of this is your fault!”

Others joined him, breaking the perimeter and daring to step onto private property. Property owned by the beast. Few of the villagers had gotten a close look at Nicholas, and he intended to keep it that way. The few who had had wasted no time in spreading the rumors of his hideous side.

At the first lull in the ranting, Nicholas spoke. “Legend would confirm your accusations,” he admitted. “But living in the past won’t change the future…or the present. I’ve returned to Raven’s Cliff, my home, to rectify my mistakes.”

“Considering all that’s happened, you’re a little late, aren’t you?”

Nicholas squinted to get a better look at the man who had stepped forward. Rick Simpson. The new mayor.

“Yes.” Nicholas didn’t bother defending himself. He was guilty. He had failed his grandfather and all of Raven’s Cliff. “I will—”

“There’ll be more trouble!” a woman shouted.

Nicholas didn’t recognize her but her accusation carried significant weight.

“The only way to be rid of the curse once and for all,” a man who looked vaguely familiar to Nicholas offered, “is to run him out of town for good.”

This was the reaction Nicholas had expected. “You don’t understand—”

“You folks should be helping with this situation, not adding fuel to the fire.” The chief surveyed the crowd. “Chapman, are you seriously taking part in this?”

Stuart Chapman, the owner of the general store. Nicholas had thought he recognized the man who had a reputation for always getting along and never taking sides. The mountain of a man was usually friendly…even to the beast.

“Look what he’s done, Chief,” Chapman argued. The crowd reiterated his assessment. “If he doesn’t go, more trouble will come. Haven’t we suffered enough? How many more friends and neighbors have to die before this monster is finished?”

Nicholas flinched in spite of being accustomed to being considered just that. A monster. The beast. He’d been called both names many times.

“Go home, Stuart,” the chief urged, his patience clearly at an end. “Take these good folks with you. Mr. Sterling has done nothing wrong. Unless he breaks the law, he has just as much right to be here as any of you.”

As if the new mayor had only just recognized the best interests of the citizens he represented, Simpson put up his hands. “Chief Swanson is right. We should all go home and ponder a way to make the best of this unpleasant situation.”

The crowd wasn’t easily persuaded, but after a few more shouts in Nicholas’s direction and some prompting by the deputies and the mayor, the exodus finally began.

Simpson was the last to climb into a vehicle. He stared at Nicholas from across the yard as if daring him to react. He might pretend to be going along with the chief, but he obviously wasn’t finished yet. Nicholas refused to rise to the bait. He would not give the bastard the satisfaction.

Nicholas had much larger problems.

“This is how it’s going to be from now on,” Swanson said wearily as the trucks and SUVs roared away. His deputies followed the caravan along the narrow, winding road that led back into Raven’s Cliff proper. “You might want to consider if this is really what you want to do, Sterling.”

Nicholas turned to the chief. “I know what I have to do. All I need is what is rightfully mine to start the process.”

Swanson nodded. “The village attorney, Mason Cates, is working on that.” The chief pushed up his cap and scratched his balding head. “We thought you were dead, Nicholas. Eventually the village had to do something with the property, but the legal kinks will be worked out and then you can take possession of your family’s estate. It’s just gonna take a little more time.”

Blake Monroe would need to be reimbursed for the work he’d done on the manor. Nicholas would make that right once the legalities were settled. All of it was taking far too much time. Time was the one thing Nicholas didn’t have. “The longer we wait,” Nicholas warned, “the worse things will get.” He didn’t bother bringing up the curse. The chief knew what he meant. The evil that Nicholas felt in the air was building in intensity. Soon, very soon, there would be more trouble.

And a few irate villagers would be the least of the chief’s problems.

Swanson exhaled a bothered breath. “Yep, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What’re you going to do about this, Chief?”

Nicholas and the chief turned at the sound of Camille’s voice. She’d stepped out onto the stoop, the blanket still wrapped around her.

“The only thing I can,” Swanson admitted. “Deal with whatever comes up as it happens.”

“You should go home,” Nicholas insisted. She had gotten soaked to the bone. Considering her recent health ordeal, walking here in the rain hadn’t been a rational idea.

Camille’s gaze collided with his. “You made me a promise, Nicholas. The longer we wait…”

She didn’t have to say the rest. He understood what he had to do. What she desperately wanted him to do. “I’ll call you in the morning. We both need a good night’s rest if we’re to be adequately prepared.”

The chief looked from one to the other, completely puzzled. “What’s going on?”

“My baby is missing,” Camille snapped. “No one in your office seems to care.”

“You know that’s not true, Camille,” Swanson argued. “We’re doing all we can to find some answers.”

Camille laughed, but the sound lacked any hint of amusement. “Oh, yeah. I know just how hard you’re working. You think I did something wrong.” The pitch of her voice got higher and the sound angrier with each word. “You’re not looking any further than that.” She started to shake. “While my baby is out there with some…some…” Emotion got the better of her then. Her hands went to her face and she sobbed.

Nicholas ached with the need to hold her, to comfort her. But the chief was watching, analyzing.

To hell with it. Nicholas strode to her, wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “We will find your baby. Whatever it takes.”

The reality that he couldn’t focus on restoring the lighthouse until he helped Camille find her baby haunted the fringes of his mind.

But that couldn’t be helped.

A child was missing.

Camille’s child.

His child.

“THANK YOU, CHIEF.” Camille said the words though she didn’t feel the slightest bit grateful to the man.

But he had given her a ride home.

That was something.

Though the rain had stopped, a chill had permeated the air, held close to the ground by the consuming fog. She shivered as she hurried up the sidewalk to the front door of her parents’ home.

She hadn’t been thinking when she’d sneaked out the back door and run through the storm to find Nicholas. She’d tried to sleep, but she just kept going over and over everything the chief had said earlier tonight. She’d heard him talking to her parents when he’d stopped by to give an update. He believed Camille had suffered some sort of psychotic break during the kidnapping and that she either knew what the kidnapper had done with her child or had abandoned the child herself in order to seize the opportunity to escape her abductor. That theory had likely come from the psychologist. He hadn’t laid that scenario out in a neat little line to Camille, but he’d hinted at the idea.