Chapter Five

E ven though there were disadvantages to having a large, overprotective family, there were also some very nice perks when one was five months’ pregnant and moving into a new house. While everyone had an opinion on what she needed to do and how she should do it, no one would let her lift anything heavier than her laptop. The only responsibility she’d had was to direct traffic when she and four large MacBain and MacKeage cousins went down to Boston and emptied her condo, and then stand back and watch them unload the truck in Maine.

Camry had decided that what was happening in Frog Cove was much more interesting than her work in Florida right now, considering that her latest attempt to harness ion propulsion had failed. Her job was somewhat an independent position; NASA supplied the lab and Camry contributed the brainpower. So Cam had called whomever she answered to and told them she was extending her vacation another week.

Great. It had been only three days since Megan had purchased her cozy little cottage, and she was ready to strangle her sister. Camry kept insisting she climb right back on the horse she’d fallen off when Wayne Ferris had broken her heart.

“I am not going over there with a pie you baked, to ask for a date,” Megan told her for the fourth time in as many minutes. Camry had actually baked an apple pie for Meg to present to her neighbor! Megan plopped into a chair in front of her still curtainless window facing the lake and glared at her sister. “And besides, what do you suppose his reaction will be when he sees my belly? He’s going to wonder what sort of woman gets knocked up by one man, then starts looking for a replacement before the kid’s even born.”

“I’m not asking you to propose to the guy,” Cam countered. “I’m only following up on Chelsea’s suggestion to use him for practice.”

“She made that suggestion to you .”

“Camry, leave your sister alone,” Grace said, walking out of the bedroom, her arms full of packing material. “Meg doesn’t want to date anyone. She wants Wayne.”

“Good God,” Cam said in a strangled voice, jumping to her feet. “You’re hoping Ferris will come after her. You think he’s going to show up here any day now, hat in hand, and beg her to take him back.”

Megan also jumped up, horrified. “Mom! Is that true?”

“It’s been four months,” Camry said. “He’s not coming.”

“Is it true?” Megan repeated. “All this time, you’ve been thinking Wayne’s going to suddenly show up here?”

“Would you take him back if he did?” Grace asked softly.

“No!” Cam said before Megan could. “The bastard broke her heart!”

Grace continued looking at Megan.

Megan shook her head.

“But what if Wayne realizes he made a mistake?” Grace asked. “You two had only known each other a little over a month, camping in tents out on the tundra in an isolated corner of the world.” She set the packing material down and walked up to Megan. “What if once Wayne got back to his empty home, he realized he needs you in his life? What if he’s been as miserable as you’ve been?”

“You have no idea of the things he said to me that day.” Megan took a shuddering breath. “Wayne made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with me or our child. I begged him, Mama, to give us a chance, but it was like he suddenly turned into a completely different person. I—I actually became afraid of him,” she whispered. “I couldn’t pack my bags and get out of there fast enough.”

“What do ye mean, you were afraid of him?” Her father came out of the bedroom carrying several collapsed boxes. He dropped them by the door and walked up to Megan, taking hold of her shoulders. “Did he hurt you, daughter?”

“No, Daddy. He just…” She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against his chest with a sigh. “He just turned into somebody I didn’t like anymore.”

Jack sat on his snowmobile and sipped hot cocoa from his Thermos. He was parked on the lake about a hundred yards from shore, the moonless night making him nearly invisible while offering him a perfect view of what was going on inside his neighbor’s living room.

He’d finally figured out how to approach her, but he was no closer to catching Megan alone than he was to catching whoever had broken into the bakery. He could accept not making any headway on the vandals, considering that every doughnut addict within fifty miles of Pine Creek had left their fingerprints in that bakery, and forensics still hadn’t identified that foul-smelling slime.

As for Megan, Jack couldn’t believe his luck when Bob and Joan Quimby had come over to say good-bye and told him that a lovely woman named Megan MacKeage had purchased their house. And by the way, she was five months’ pregnant and single, so could he maybe keep an eye on her?

But she was always surrounded by people. Megan had enough aunts and uncles and cousins and in-laws to populate a small city; he’d been tripping over MacBains and MacKeages in town for the last two weeks. And her only unmarried sister, Camry, was staying at her house at night.

Jack figured his legendary patience would survive only two or three more days before he got desperate enough to kidnap the woman. He really hated it when a hunt ended that way; things had a tendency to get messy, and he always felt he’d somehow failed. He snorted. Catching their new police chief with a local lady bound and gagged in his cruiser would certainly go over well with the fine folks who’d hired him.

Assuming Greylen MacKeage didn’t kill him on sight.

“What year was Wayne born, and where?” Cam asked.

Megan added a handful of marshmallows to her cocoa, then turned to look at her sister sitting on the couch. Their parents had left twenty minutes ago, and Megan and Camry had declared a truce—for now. “Why?”

“I’m Googling him, but apparently Wayne Ferris is a popular name.” Cam continued typing on the laptop sitting on the coffee table. “It would help if I knew when and where he was born.”

Megan walked over and sat down to look at the screen, intrigued despite herself. “Why are you searching Wayne?”

Cam shrugged. “Just curious. Where’s he from?”

“Alberta, Canada. He lives a couple hundred miles northeast of Edmonton…in Medicine Lake, I think he said.”

“Oohhh, he likes it cold and remote, does he? Maybe that’s where he buries the bodies,” Cam said, making a frightened face as she hit a few more buttons.

“When did Wayne graduate to being a serial killer? I told you, he isn’t violent.”

“Most serial killers aren’t, outwardly. Haven’t you seen those interviews with neighbors saying how they can’t believe it, that ‘he was such a nice, quiet man’?” Cam turned to Megan. “I understand why you wouldn’t have said anything to Mom and Dad, but it’s just you and me now. So when Wayne suddenly changed into a different person, did he get rough with you?”

“He got…At first he just stared in disbelief when I told him I was pregnant, then he hugged me, and then he turned around and walked out without saying a word. I have no idea where he slept that night. The next morning he showed up at the kitchen, led me by the hand to his tent, and told me to pack up my stuff and get the hell out of there before sunset.”

“With no explanation?”

“None.” Megan blew on her cocoa, staring off into space. “He refused to even talk about the baby that morning. He was so frighteningly soft-spoken. You know, like how Dad gets when he’s really mad at one of us and is trying not to explode?”

“He only gets like that when we do something dumb that he thinks is dangerous. He’s reacting out of fear.”

“Exactly. I think Wayne was scared to death, once he realized what having a baby meant. Mom was right; we were in an isolated little world of our own for those six weeks. And when he thought about us returning to civilization, he panicked.”

“So the weasel showed his true colors.” Camry started typing again. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, Meg, but you’re better off without the jerk. You still didn’t say if he hit you or not.”

“He didn’t hit me.” Megan stood and walked to the window. “But he sure as hell scared me.” She turned back to Cam. “And you know I don’t scare easy. But there had been an accident two days before I discovered I was pregnant, and the tension in camp was high for everyone. One of the Canadian government workers who was monitoring our study died.”

“How? You were counting geese and caribou, for Pete’s sake. What could possibly happen in the middle of the tundra?”

“We don’t know how it happened. Somebody found the guy lying facedown in a small pond. He had apparently drowned during the night.”

“And you’re thinking that’s why Wayne reacted the way he did?”

Megan shrugged. “If so, it doesn’t explain why I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Exactly,” Cam said, looking back at the screen.

“Hey, how are you getting on the Internet, anyway? I haven’t had a phone installed yet.”

“The whole house is wi-fi. Joan and Bob had a high-speed cable connection, and they must have forgotten to shut it off. So you’ve got cable TV, too.” Camry made a sound of disgust. “I’ve found your Wayne Ferris, but the info on him only goes back five years.”

Megan returned to the couch, studying what Cam had found. “That’s him. He went to undergraduate school in British Columbia and got his master’s degree in Toronto.” She reached over and scrolled down the page, reading what little was there. “I wonder why there’s nothing else?”

“Maybe because Wayne Ferris didn’t exist until five years ago?” Cam said. “You knew him what, six weeks? Did he ever talk about his childhood?”

“Not much, now that you mention it. He had this way of always turning the conversation back to me.”

Cam rolled her eyes. “Every woman’s dream guy, and you fell for him hook, line, and sinker.”

“I do know he was raised by his grandfather,” Meg defended. “Or maybe his great-grandfather? His parents were killed in a car accident when he was nine. I think he was in it, because he’s got burn scars on his hands, but I could never get him to talk about it. I do remember him saying something about inheriting the house in Medicine Lake.”

Megan noticed the headlights of a fast-moving sled racing back to shore. “Jack Stone sure likes his new snowmobile,” she said, “He’s been out riding again.”

“Good. Come on,” Camry said, leading Megan to the counter. “It’s time you got Wayne Ferris out of your head once and for all.” She picked up the pie she’d baked and shoved it in Megan’s hands. “We are going over to Jack Stone’s house right now, and you’re asking him out.”

Megan shoved the pie back at her. “No.”

“Yes, you are,” Camry said. Then she sighed. “Okay, you don’t have to ask him out. But we’re going over there to introduce ourselves. You really need to see that nice guys still exist, Meg.”

“We don’t know that Jack Stone is a nice guy.”

“Chelsea liked him.”

Megan rolled her eyes. “She only saw him walking to his cruiser. For all we know, he’s a womanizing, chest-beating caveman who thinks women should stay at home, barefoot and pregnant.”

Camry laughed as she put on her coat and boots. “Then he should love your belly.” She walked over and took the pie while giving Megan a critical inspection. “When was the last time you had a haircut?”

“Never mind my hair,” Meg said, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. Dammit, when Camry got like this, the only way to shut her up was to play along to make her think she’d won. “Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not asking him out, and we’re telling him you made the pie.”

“But if he knows I baked it, that’ll defeat its purpose.”

“Not if he gets food poisoning, it won’t.”

“Fine, then,” Camry said, storming out the door. “If he really is as cute as Chelsea said, I’ll ask him out.”