Sylvie Kurtz - Pull Of The Moon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Title Page Pull of the Moon Sylvie Kurtz www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the areorplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&Ms for company, Sylvie Kurtz realised a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial licence and instrument rating. Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard, where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. You can write to Sylvie at PO Box 702, Milford, NH 03055, USA. And visit her website at www.sylviekurtz. com. For Chuck – for telling me I’m wonderful no matter what. For Ann, Joyce and Lorrie – for your continuing friendship. I would like to extend a special thank-you to the following people for their help: Jennifer LeDuc Cusato, Marianne Mancusi, Denise Robbins and Jared Shurtliff.

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Copyright

Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the areorplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&Ms for company, Sylvie Kurtzrealised a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial licence and instrument rating.

Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard, where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense.

You can write to Sylvie at PO Box 702, Milford, NH 03055, USA. And visit her website at www.sylviekurtz. com.

For Chuck – for telling me I’m wonderful no matter what. For Ann, Joyce and Lorrie – for your continuing friendship. I would like to extend a special thank-you to the following people for their help: Jennifer LeDuc Cusato, Marianne Mancusi, Denise Robbins and Jared Shurtliff.

October brought out the ghosts. Not that they weren’t always there for Rita Meadows, but in October, they crowded her, pressured her, demanded she set them free.

Alone in her big bed, she couldn’t sleep. Returning home to Moongate tended to do that to her, especially now that the anniversary was fast approaching. She had to readjust to the mansion, to the eerie weight of the leaden memories its wooden facade held prisoner. This was her first night home since her secret trip to Chicago—one Nicolas wouldn’t approve of—and already she wished she could leave again, if only for a little while longer.

Maybe she should just skip October this year, come back in November when the ghosts’ grip lost its fierceness. After all these years of vigil, her aging bones deserved a rest. She could spend October bobbing on a yacht in the Caribbean or tasting her way through Napa Valley.

Oblivion. That would be nice.

She bolted up at the renegade thought. “No, baby, I didn’t mean that.”

Her fault. Her cross to bear. She hadn’t given up hope; she never would. But sometimes, she just wanted the pain to end.

Outside a storm boiled over Mount Monadnock and down into the valley, spilling into Moonhill. Like a brew bubbling over from a witch’s pot, rain flooded against the roof and deluged the windowpanes with waterfalls. Wind pounded against the walls, and thunder reverberated through the empty halls. A tomb would feel much like this: cold, dark and empty.

The plague of insomnia had her staring at the ceiling, finding the face of evil in the plaster as a necromancer might in a scrying bowl. One answer to one question. That’s all she wanted. Why was it so hard to find?

The storm’s fury ebbed, and the faint whimpers of a baby’s cries imprinted themselves on the air. She slid under the covers as the frightened pitch increased. Closing her eyes, fisting her hands against her ears, did nothing to vanquish the child’s terror.

Only one thing would.

Tears coursing down her cheeks, she rose from her bed. As she’d done on countless other nights, she crept into the hallway and wound her way toward the third-floor tower room. There she pressed the plunger of the antique iron latch. The door creaked open and the cries instantly ceased.

The cries weren’t real. They were just a trick of her mind, giving form to her guilt. There were no babies here, dead or otherwise—only her misguided hope.

Wrapping one arm around her stomach, she stepped into the yellow pool of artificial light burning from the night-light that had made Valentina feel safe. An expectant hush weighted the room as if the walls were listening for the missing four-year-old’s return.

Nothing had changed in this room. For twenty-five years the tic-tac-toe play rug, the child’s bed with its princess-pink canopy, the pile of stuffed animals on the butterfly-stenciled storage chest had remained as they were on the day Valentina had disappeared.

The static landscape her daughter had left behind stared back, ripe with accusation, and a lightning jag of pain, raw and deep, clawed at Rita’s heart. “I’m so sorry, baby, so sorry.”

If she could do it all over again…But no, there was no rewinding time.

As Rita turned to leave, a gray shape formed along her peripheral vision.

A sigh, no more than an exhale, seemed to sough against her ear. Mama.

Breath held, Rita stopped and pressed a hand to her thundering heart. “Valentina?”

The hope, so sharp in her voice, cut through the thick fog of memories. Of course not. What had the doctor called it? Projection? The disappointment of reality resettled heavily on her shoulders.

“No, Rita. It’s me, Holly.”

Rita swiveled toward the doorway where her faithful friend and housekeeper stood, her long gray braid a beacon in the night.

“I thought I heard—” Rita’s hand fluttered like a surrender flag toward the window. “I thought Valentina was…home.”

Holly’s solid arm wrapped around Rita’s waist, supporting her, and gently led her away from the center of her agony.

“You must think me a fool.”

“No, of course not, Rita. It was just the storm. Let me walk you back to your room.”

“I’m okay.” Shoulders stooped, Rita shook off Holly’s helping hands and made her way back into her bedroom alone, fading into the shadows of the house…just another ghost.

Pewter shrouded the October afternoon as Valerie Zea and Mike Murakita—her photog and soundman for the shoot—made their way to Moonhill, New Hampshire. Here and there a red maple leaf or a yellow beech leaf, still clinging stubbornly to a limb, flickered like a tongue of fire.

Valerie had seen photos of the White Mountains blazing with fall color, of the misty lakes like milky beads of moonstone wreathing the endless vistas from high atop the mountains, of the bellowing moose that required warnings to motorists every few miles on the highway. And she’d wanted to see all that rugged beauty, so different from the lush flatness of Central Florida she was accustomed to.

She’d been disappointed enough when she’d read that the Old Man of the Mountain—a nature-made Indian head of stacked boulders perched precariously on the side of a mountain for centuries—had fallen a few years ago and no longer watched over Franconia Notch. Just the name—Franconia Notch—conjured up a grand and magnificent picture. Not that they were anywhere near the White Mountains, since Moonhill was located in the southern part of the state. But the fog was cheating her out of her anticipated sense-stunning experience.

She compared the MapQuest directions she’d gotten online against the road signs popping up out of the low clouds on the narrow road. “Turn here.”

Mike jerked the car onto the country lane. “A little more warning next time.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

On the right side, a low stone wall framed a cemetery whose granite headstones and statuary poked out of the mist. Not quite on the scale of a mountaintop view, but filled with mystery, suspense and intrigue.

On the left, a Stick-style Victorian with a wraparound porch glared through the murk like some sort of movie set haunted house. Orange fairy lights dripped from the eaves. Giant glow-in-the-dark spiders and webs clung to the decorative trusses. A life-size mummy with arms out-stretched seemed poised to lumber out of the six-foot tall black coffin leaning against the oak by the front walk. On the lawn, strobes blasted on and off at intervals, lighting up red-eyed bats, moaning zombies and shrieking gar-goyles. There were enough special effects there to make a Hollywood techie jealous.

“Talk about overkill,” she said. The overblown drama of the scene would make an interesting segment of its own, though, especially if she could find a Florida angle to it. Maybe the owner’s parents were part of the snowbirds that flocked to the Sunshine State every winter. She made a mental note to look into the possibilities before she pitched the idea to Higgins, her executive producer. He’d appreciate maximizing the bang for his travel-expense buck.

She peered at the web-encrusted mailbox by the entrance for the address. “We’ve got a way to go yet.”

Mike warbled his voice to make it sound spooky, but it came out sounding more like the Count on Sesame Street. “Maybe it’s the local haunted house for Halloween.” He shot her a mischievous grin. At thirty, he still looked like a kid with his boyish face that couldn’t grow a beard, except for a sparse tuft on his chin that looked like a smudge of dirt. “Want some B-roll of that for your segment?”

“Yeah, Higgins would go for that. He’s already ticked off Krista’s doctor wouldn’t let her fly, and he had to send second-choice me to do the job.” The assignment was high priority since it had come down as a special order from Edmund Meadows, the station’s owner. He’d requested a package about the kidnapping of his great-niece twenty-five years ago in hopes of stirring up some new evidence that could lead to finding the missing girl.

“On the plus side. He put you above Bailey.”

Bailey-the-Beautiful who had Higgins wrapped around her long legs. Valerie snorted. There was too much at stake for Higgins to risk needing to mop up after Bailey. “Efficiency won out over looks.”

“Either that or he couldn’t give her up for four whole nights.”

“There is that.”

High on Windemere Drive, Moongate Mansion materialized out of the shifting mist. First the six-foot granite wall and the black iron gate, canted open, daring intruders to trespass. Then the estate itself, a gray nineteenth-century Victorian with an eclectic mix of Italianate and Queen Anne. Each generation of Meadowses, seeking no doubt to stamp their mark, had added to the original two-story, four-room house until it sprawled over 13,000 square feet, looking like some sort of Frankenstein creature.

Valerie couldn’t imagine living in such a dreary place, especially with its constant bruise of painful memories. But she also understood why Rita Meadows stayed. For Valentina. If she came back, her home would be there, waiting for her, lights shining bright, and her mother would be there, too, arms open wide.