9. Bermuda Triangle

Nadia

Ibraked beside Riggs's big, shiny, fancy truck in his driveway on a dramatic skid of gravel.

I did this because I'd just finished buying a Santa beanie, an American Flag, and the apparatus to fly it from a post on my front porch.

And I'd also spent the last hour and a half reading about Ray Andrews, Richard Sandusky, Ezra Corbin, Carrie Molnar, the Misted Pines "Coven" and their reason for forming.

Not to mention not one, not two, but three articles in the local paper that told tales of the Haunting of Whitaker Lake, which shared the heretofore unknown knowledge that it hadn't been only three years since someone lived in my cabin.

It had been fifteen.

In fact, the judge-appointed, but bitterly disputed trust that was managing the Whitaker brothers' estates had made the decision to sell off the lake and its properties because they'd been sitting mostly derelict. This was because no one would stay in either of them, including Riggs's house, for more than a few weeks. This due to the unexplained, but highly creepy stuff that happened there.

As such, I jumped out of my car, raring for another go-round with Riggs, because, yes, perhaps I should have looked into things more before I leaped.

But first, who knew you had to research a small town for their serial killer history, and second, research the cabin you were considering renting for news of recent hauntings.

He also should have told me.

I was marching toward his house when Riggs all but burst out of the front door in a full-on jog, coming at me.

This surprising circumstance, of course, made me halt.

"Jesus, Nadia," he said when he got to me and grabbed my upper arms. "You okay?"

He knew my state of mind, for sure, considering his history, and his knowledge of mine. And it was sweet, his obvious concern at me skidding to a dramatic stop in his driveway.

He also knew my cabin was possibly haunted.

So there was that.

"No, Riggs, I'm not okay!" I yelled. "I just got back from lunch at the local diner where I got an earful from a shopkeeper who told me my cabin was haunted! Why didn't you?—?"

I wasn't able to finish that because Riggs looked over my head, gritted out, "Kimmy," let my arms go but grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the front door, doing this yanking his phone out of his back pocket.

I was so astonished by this reaction, I didn't think to say anything until we were inside. And then I couldn't say anything because he was hauling me down into his living room, then up, up and up into his kitchen.

Jeez. If this place was wild from the outside, it was wilder inside.

One could say it wasn't too much of a shocker Lincoln Whitaker blew his brother and wife away, if the chaotic design of his house reflected his mental state.

And then I couldn't say anything because I was confronted with an eight or nine-year-old mini-Riggs sitting at the counter in the kitchen eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

His mouth full of sandwich, his silvery-blue eyes looked to me, his dad's hand in mine, then back to me.

I stopped still.

Riggs let my hand go.

"Ledger, this is our new neighbor, Nadia. Nadia, this is my boy, Ledger," Riggs introduced, then said, "Yeah, it's me, Kimmy. What the fuck?"

I looked to him to see he had his phone to his ear.

New priority task at hand, I returned my attention to his son and greeted, "Hey, Ledger."

He swallowed and said, "Hey."

We both turned to Riggs when he started growling.

"No, you didn't need to tell her," Riggs said, paused, then, "And no, I wasn't going to say anything because it's all bullshit. Why people are still talking about that crap, I do not know."

"Let me guess," Ledger began. "Kimmy told you the lake is haunted."

Seemed Kimmy might have a bit of a reputation.

"Yes," I replied.

He did a kid shrug, took a bite, chewed a couple of times, but with mouth still full, he said, "This place was supposed to be haunted too, but Dad's been here years, and nothing."

Well, I'd been at my place for weeks, and the first night, someone was scratching at the windows.

I didn't tell Ledger that.

I said, "Good to know."

We both looked back to Riggs when he irately announced, "I don't care about Hoover or Kennedy or the fuckin' Bermuda Triangle, and hear me, Kimmy, neither does Nadia. Lay the fuck off."

With that, he took his phone from his ear, hit it with his thumb and tossed it with a clatter to the counter.

"Jesus. Kimmy," he muttered, still irritable, if his tone and the laser beams he was trying to shoot out of his eyes to annihilate his phone, and Kimmy through it, were anything to go by.

"Can I talk to you?" I asked, and shifted my attention back to Ledger, "No offense, but I need a few words with your dad alone."

"Bet," he replied.

Cool is as cool was, the father and son version.

I went to Riggs and grabbed his hand, intent to walk him out the front door, but he had other ideas.

He twisted his hand from mine, curled an arm around my waist, and part guided, part shuffled me around the corner of the kitchen counter that had a clear view of the lake through windows across a landing big enough to waltz in. From there, he pulled me into a shadowy recess that I saw led to a winding staircase made into a wide column paneled with dark wood.

Whoa.

It was weird and gorgeous all at once.

We climbed one floor to another landing, hooked a left rather than going down a long hall that led to some rooms, and almost immediately entered another wood-paneled alcove winding staircase, and we went up that.

We came out directly into a bedroom made almost entirely of windows. It had a king-size bed covered in cobalt-blue sheets with a matching comforter (unmade and no toss pillows or euros to be found). The room also had a tan leather club chair that sported an exploding duffle bag and a variety of button downs, T-shirts and jeans of various fading thrown over it, to the point that I knew the chair was tan leather only by a bit of the arm showing through.

There were attractive nightstands with equally attractive lamps on top, both all but covered with books, coins, crushed receipts, and dual smatterings of new and opened condom packets (of course).

There was further a gorgeous low bureau that was so long and fit so well against the half wall below the windows, that it looked made for the space.

And there was a stone fireplace cutting through the windows, above which was a flat screen TV.

I had no idea why I was, but I was in Riggs's bedroom.

I felt a shiver much like the one I'd felt when he'd rubbed his whiskers on my cheek the night before, just as pleasant and promising, but not as strong.

I turned to him.

"Uh…" I didn't quite begin, so stunned was I at my current location.

"Kimmy's a nut. She knows who killed Kennedy, she thinks, and she'll tell anyone in her vicinity. Not anyone who asks, mind. Anyone in her vicinity. She also knows where Hoffa is buried, and who put him there. And she's got some wild-ass theory about the link between Roswell and the Bermuda Triangle that you don't want to hear. In short, Nadia, she's good people, a good mom, a good grandma, but she's still halfway around the bend, and she gets off on taking people there with her."

"The first night at the cabin, there was scratching at the window."

I watched in fascinated horror as Riggs's long body went completely still.

I didn't have time for him to go still, mostly because it freaked me out.

"Why didn't you tell me any of this last night?" I asked.

He came unstuck and answered, "Because I don't believe the stories, seeing as there's no such thing as ghosts. And no, before you ask, I wasn't ever going to tell you, not only because I think it's shit, because I know it is. The whole lake was supposed to be haunted, but I've lived here for a while, and nothing. Are you sure you heard scratching on your window?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "It might have been a tree. But I checked, and that doesn't seem possible. But I've lived my whole life in lakefront properties, that lake being Lake Michigan, and those properties being in Chicago proper. Thus, I don't know nature living."

He put his hands to my arms again, but this time to rub them soothingly.

And one could say, Riggs's sweet touch could sooth.

It also did other things. I just ignored those things.

"I'll have a look," he promised. "But it was probably nothing, Nadia, because, again, ghosts don't exist. Kimmy's harmless and mostly hilarious, unless you're not in the state of mind to hear her stories. And the reason I didn't tell you and didn't want you to know, full stop, is that I figured you aren't in the right frame of mind."

He wasn't wrong about that.

And it was kind, how he didn't share because he was looking out for me.

I didn't tell him how I'd foolishly moved to what appeared to be a serial killer and scorned woman mecca before I knew it was either.

Instead, I shifted our conversation to something else that was pressing.

"Ledger?"

He smiled. It was bold and white and proud and gorgeous.

"Yeah," he said, dropping his hands from my arms and taking a step back. "I didn't get around to that last night either. But I bought two of those bottles from my bud, so I meant to, eventually."

"He's a mini Riggs."

The smile got bolder and prouder. "He is."

"How old is he?"

"Nine."

"Ledger is a cool name," I told him.

"Agreed," he replied, but said no more, and I didn't get the chance to ask him why we were chatting in his bedroom and not out by my car, because we were joined by the person we were talking about.

He was holding out his dad's phone. "Dad, your phone was ringing. The screen said it's Lucille."

"Thanks, buddy," Riggs murmured, and with a dip of his chin to me, he stepped to a window moving his thumbs over the screen, and then he put it to his ear and his eyes to the view.

Ledger looked to me. "You fish?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Kayak?"

More shaking of my head. "No."

"Run trails?"

"Only when chased by a ghost."

The kid cracked a smile.

We both whirled to Riggs with the way he whispered, "Fuck."

"Is everything okay?" I asked a question I knew was stupid considering the look on his face.

"I need to ask a favor," he replied urgently.

The urgency got me, and I said softly, "Anything."

"I'm gonna call Ledger's gramme and ask her to come look after him. But she probably won't be able to get here for at least half an hour. I know you two just met." He glanced at Ledger. "Sorry, buddy." He came back to me. "But can you look after him until she gets here? I gotta get to the hospital."

"Why?" Ledger asked, a little-kid thread of alarm snaking through that syllable, and my heart lurched at hearing it.

"Something's happened to Uncle Bubs," Riggs told him.

Ledger went pale, so obviously "Uncle Bubs" meant something to him, and he definitely meant something to Riggs.

Riggs approached his son and wrapped his fingers around his boy's shoulder. "I don't know what's happening. But I gotta go. I'll let you know what I know as soon as I find out."

"'Kay, Dad."

Riggs looked to me.

"We're good. Go," I urged.

At that, Riggs shocked the breath out of me when he came right to me, wrapped his hand around the back of my head and bent to kiss my forehead.

As fast as that happened, he did the same to Ledger.

Then he vanished into the murky alcove staircase.

I looked to his son who was staring after his dad.

Then I went to his son and touched his shoulder.

He looked up at me.

"Finish your sandwich?"

He nodded.

"Wanna see a haunted cabin?"

He smiled, not entirely committed to it, but it was there.

"Sure," he replied.

"Righty ho, let's go so we can be back before your grandmother gets here."

He nodded and led the way.

I followed.