Mystique Read online

  “Who are you?”

  “What?” Trish answered, frightened by O’Neill’s sudden question.

  A cold wind ruffled the linen tablecloth, and the chill cut through her layers of clothing and made her shiver. She was intensely aware of the vulnerability of her situation, alone in the wilderness with a man she barely knew. Did O’Neill know more about what had happened to her sister than he’d let on? Even more frightening was the possibility that he might have been responsible in some way for her sister’s disappearance.

  Trish pushed away her fears. Tales of evil spirits, ghosts and strange lights had affected her reason. O’Neill had been the epitome of kindness and consideration since their first meeting. She had no reason to fear him.

  She hoped.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  It might be warm outside, but our June lineup will thrill and chill you!

  * This month, we have a couple of great miniseries. Man of Her Dreams is the spine-tingling conclusion to Debra Webb’s trilogy THE ENFORCERS. And there are just two installments left in B.J. Daniels’s McCALLS’ MONTANA series—High-Caliber Cowboy is out now, and Shotgun Surrender will be available next month.

  * We also have two fantastic special promotions. First, is our Gothic ECLIPSE title, Mystique, by Charlotte Douglas. And Dani Sinclair brings you D.B. Hayes, Detective, the second installment in our LIPSTICK LTD. promotion featuring sexy sleuths.

  * Last, but definitely not least, is Jessica Andersen’s The Sheriff’s Daughter. Sparks fly between a medical investigator and a vet in this exciting medical thriller.

  * Also, keep your eyes peeled for Joanna Wayne’s THE GENTLEMAN’S CLUB, available from Signature Spotlight.

  This month, and every month, we promise to deliver six of the best romantic suspense titles around. Don’t miss a single one!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  MYSTIQUE

  CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The major passions of Charlotte Douglas’s life are her husband—her high school sweetheart to whom she’s been married for over three decades—and writing compelling stories. A national bestselling author, she enjoys filling her books with love of home and family, special places and happy endings. With their two cairn terriers, she and her husband live most of the year on Florida’s central west coast, but spend the warmer months at their North Carolina mountaintop retreat.

  No matter what time of year, readers can reach her at [email protected], where she’s always delighted to hear from them.

  Books by Charlotte Douglas

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  380—DREAM MAKER

  434—BEN’S WIFE

  482—FIRST-CLASS FATHER

  515—A WOMAN OF MYSTERY

  536—UNDERCOVER DAD

  611—STRANGER IN HIS ARMS *

  638—LICENSED TO MARRY

  668—MONTANA SECRETS

  691—THE BRIDE’S RESCUER

  740—THE CHRISTMAS TARGET

  852—MYSTIQUE

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  591—IT’S ABOUT TIME

  623—BRINGING UP BABY

  868—MONTANA MAIL-ORDER WIFE *

  961—SURPRISE INHERITANCE

  999—DR. WONDERFUL

  1027—VERDICT: DADDY

  1038—ALMOST HEAVEN †

  1049—ONE GOOD MAN †

  1061—SPRING IN THE VALLEY †

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  O’Neill—Handsome and mysterious resident manager of Endless Sky resort.

  Trish Devlin—She’d use all of her abilities to search the wilderness surrounding Endless Sky for her sister.

  Quinn Stevens—Reclusive billionaire, owner of Endless Sky, he’s been dubbed The Last Man Standing by Wall Street. His true identity is still a mystery.

  Debra Devlin—Trish’s sister, a reporter who goes to Endless Sky to interview Stevens…and then disappears.

  Victoria Westbrook—Wealthy heiress in search of a husband. Is that the only reason she’s come to the exclusive resort?

  Chad Englewood—Real estate investor who claims he was cheated by Stevens. Is it his desire for revenge that caused Debra to go missing?

  Captain Metcalf—Sheriff’s deputy in charge of the search for Debra Devlin.

  The Averys—An elderly couple from Atlanta.

  Judd Raye—The resort’s custodian.

  Ludie May Shuler—A maid at Endless Sky. She has keys to every room….

  Henri—Endless Sky’s sous chef. He knows just what to put in the food. And what not to.

  Janine Conover—Assistant resident manager.

  Tiffany Slocum—Another reporter seeking an interview with Quinn Stevens. How far would she go to get it?

  Michael Redlin—Nashville music producer.

  Dan Beard—Owner of Kentucky racing stables.

  Austin Werner—Independently wealthy from a secret source.

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Trish Devlin stepped from the dimly lit, air-conditioned school corridor into the harsh afternoon light. In spite of the intense heat, she shivered with a sudden sense of foreboding, as if a shadow had blocked the sun, and her breath caught in her throat. She stopped short, ambushed by an unexpected wave of negative emotions, but the sensation of imminent disaster passed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her wondering whether her sixth sense had activated or her imagination was playing tricks.

  Humidity engulfed her like wet cotton batting and dispersed the remnants of her sudden chill. The blazing Florida sun had turned the school’s parking lot into a hot, shimmering pond of sticky asphalt. She hurried to her car, closed tight against forecast thunderstorms, and opened the door to an interior hot enough to bake bread. With a sigh, she thought enviously of her sister Debra, financial reporter for the Tribune, on assignment in the North Carolina mountains, where early October meant refreshingly cool days and crisp, chilly nights, not the unending sizzling sauna of a Tampa summer.

  But, Trish thought as she waited for her car’s interior to drop a few degrees, she wouldn’t trade jobs with Deb for anything, and certainly not for the sake of a better climate. Trish loved her work as a seventh-grade teacher and welcomed the challenge of shaping young minds. Her students, teetering on the brink of adolescence, vacillated erratically between childhood and maturity and filled her days with perpetual surprises. She had to scramble constantly to keep up with their brief attention spans. Reporting business news as her sister did, even if the career took Trish around the world, could never match the satisfaction of helping children learn.

  Thinking of Deb, Trish smiled, until the eerie chill struck her again. She hoped she wasn’t coming down with something. She didn’t want to turn over her newly trained classes to a substitute teacher only eight weeks into the new school year.

  She climbed into the car, slid gingerly onto the hot upholstery and started the engine. After she switched the air-conditioning to its highest setting, the car cooled quickly, creating a pleasant temperature for the long ride home along the Suncoast Parkway into the rural countryside of North Tampa. In spite of her physical comfort, however, Trish’s emotional uneasiness grew, frayed her nerves and filled her with unnamed worries that made her skin feel too tight for her body.

 
I’m just tired. I need to put my feet up, have a glass of wine and de-stress after a day with one hundred and fifty overactive and sometimes pain-in-the-butt preteens.

  Twenty minutes later, she turned onto the cul-de-sac in the suburban neighborhood where her home backed onto a preservation area of cypress woodlands. The sight of a plain black sedan parked in front of her house sent her anxiety level skyrocketing.

  Debra?

  Trish reached deep inside for the psychic connection she’d shared all her life with her younger sister, her only living relative. Instead of Debra’s usual comforting presence, she found only emptiness.

  She parked in her driveway and climbed out of her car. A man and woman, dressed in dark business suits, exited the sedan and approached her.

  “Patricia Devlin?” the man asked.

  Dry-mouthed, Trish nodded.

  “I’m Agent Cox, FBI.” The man flashed his ID and gold shield. “This is my partner, Agent Jernigan. May we speak with you?”

  Trish unlocked her front door with fingers that had suddenly turned clumsy, led the agents inside to the sunny living room that overlooked the woodlands at the rear of the house and offered them seats. She sank onto a white rattan sofa across from the agents and clasped her shaky hands in her lap. Their expressions were grim. Their news couldn’t be good.

  “When did you last speak with your sister?” Agent Cox asked.

  Oh, dear God. They really were there about Debra. “Yesterday morning.”

  “And you’ve heard nothing since?” The female agent’s voice was brisk, all business, but her eyes were kind.

  Trish shook her head. “But that’s not unusual. What’s this about?”

  Agent Cox leaned forward, and Trish, focusing on insignificant details to keep from coming apart at the seams, noted the strands of gray in his closely trimmed dark hair, the tiny lines around his eyes and the heavy gold college ring on his right hand.

  “Our Asheville office,” he said, “contacted your sister’s editor at the Tribune earlier this afternoon before calling us. Ms. Devlin has been missing for over twenty-four hours.”

  “Missing?” Trish shook her head in disbelief. “But she’s staying at Endless Sky Resort on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Didn’t anyone check there?”

  “The resort’s manager is the one who alerted the FBI to Ms. Devlin’s disappearance,” Agent Jernigan explained. “No one at Endless Sky has seen her since early yesterday, and this morning, one of the guests found her cell phone on a seldom-used hiking trail.”

  “Maybe she checked out,” Trish said, grasping at straws. Deb, where are you?

  A resonating psychic silence was her only reply.

  “She didn’t check out,” Agent Cox said. “Her clothes and laptop are still in her room. And the resort is as remote as they come. Most guests arrive and depart by helicopter. The only access road is more like an all-terrain challenge course, passable only by four-wheel drive vehicles. Even the most seasoned trailblazers wouldn’t simply hike out of Endless Sky. The nearest town is over thirty miles away.”

  Trish looked from one agent to the other. “So you think she’s lost in the mountains?”

  “Local search-and-rescue teams have been activated,” the female agent said, “but it’s a massive wilderness area.”

  Trish breathed deeply in hopes of easing the tightness in her chest, but worry for Debra formed a steel band around her lungs. She wished the agents would leave. She had to get to North Carolina to search for Deb herself. “Thank you for notifying me.”

  The agents exchanged glances. “We have a few questions,” Agent Cox said.

  Trish unclenched her fingers where her nails had dug crescents in the palms of her hands and tried again without success to relax. “What do you need to know?”

  “What was your sister doing at Endless Sky?” Agent Jernigan asked.

  Trish frowned. “Her editor didn’t tell you?”

  “Newspaper people play their cards close to their vests,” Cox answered with a scowl, “to protect their sources. Her editor just said she was on assignment.”

  “A big assignment,” Trish said. “She was hoping to interview Quinn Stevens.”

  “The Last Man Standing?” Agent Jernigan’s eyes went wide with surprise before she recovered her composure. “Is he at Endless Sky?”

  “He owns the place,” Trish said, “and he’s rumored to spend time there, disguised as one of the guests.”

  Quinn Stevens was an urban legend. While still in his teens, he’d developed an Internet company that made him an instant multimillionaire. His keen business sense had prompted him to sell just before the dot-coms went under in the nineties, and he’d invested his profits in real estate, which earned him billions. One of the few original entrepreneurs to survive the dot-com debacle, Stevens had been dubbed “The Last Man Standing” in a Wall Street Journal article. The nickname had stuck. Today, the reclusive entrepreneur—few, if any, knew what he looked like—had more money than Oprah. An interview, especially with accompanying pictures, would have been a major journalistic coup, one Debra had been determined to achieve.

  “Did she get her interview?” Cox asked.

  “She was hopeful,” Trish said. “When I spoke with her last, she said she was close to figuring out who he was.” The direction of their inquiries struck her. “You don’t think Quinn Stevens has anything to do with Deb’s disappearance?”

  “In order to find your sister,” Agent Jernigan said gently, “we have to be open to all possibilities.”

  “Which brings me to my next question,” Agent Cox said. “Does your sister have enemies, anyone who might wish her harm?”

  Trish shook her head and wished she could dispel the icy dread that consumed her. “Everyone loves Deb.”

  “Even the people she’s written about?” Cox said.

  “Deb’s exposed some shady dealings in her articles over the years,” Trish admitted. “The participants in those schemes weren’t too happy to see their names and unsavory business practices in print.”

  “Any of them ever threaten her?” the female agent prodded.

  Fear for her sister sent a shiver down Trish’s spine. “Deb’s had a few threatening phone calls and e-mails. Someone egged her car in the newspaper parking lot once. But her editor will know more of the specifics than I do. Deb always laughed off the threats around me.”

  As if responding to a silent signal, the agents stood at the same time and Cox offered his card. “If you hear from your sister or think of anything that might be helpful, let us know.”

  Trish took the card and walked them to the door. “Please, call me on my cell phone if you find out anything. Or leave a voice message on my home phone.”

  She rattled off her numbers, then closed the door behind them.

  Deb was missing.

  Her knees buckled and she leaned against the door. Panic threatened to consume her, and she fought against the engulfing hysteria. Ever since their parents had died when Trish was five and Deb was three, Trish had taken care of her younger sister. She wasn’t about to abandon that lifetime habit now. Drawing a deep calming breath, she thrust her fears aside.

  She hurried to the desk in the living room, extracted a pad of paper and a pencil from the drawer and turned on her computer. She and Deb were as different as night and day. Deb was the flighty one, the risk taker, the adventurer. Trish had always been the steady sister, the problem solver, the organizer. First, she called her principal and arranged for personal leave. Then she hurriedly made her list, checked Web sites and reached again for the telephone.

  Her sixth sense, a special gift as strong as her telepathic link with her sister, insisted that Deb needed her help, and Trish had a plan.

  LATE THE FOLLOWING morning, Trish gripped the arms of her tourist-class seat with white-knuckled fingers as the plane sank through heavy clouds for an instrument approach to the Asheville airport.

  Forget Trish Devlin, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time. From now on,
you’re Erin Fairchild, and you have to think of yourself as Erin or you’ll give everything away.

  She mentally cataloged what she knew about her destination. After the FBI agents had left yesterday, she’d searched the Web for information on Stevens and his resort. She’d also recalled bits and pieces of her talks with Deb about Endless Sky.

  “I could never afford this place if the Tribune wasn’t picking up the tab,” Deb had said during her first call home from the resort. “It’s definitely where the rich and famous get away from it all.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “More than interesting.” Deb’s voice had crackled with excitement. “It’s a puzzle. I get the distinct impression that nothing here is what is seems, including the guests. Some of them must be registered under fake identities for anonymity.”

  Trish was about to try her own hand at deception. If she went bumbling into Endless Sky with everyone aware that she was Deb’s sister, she’d be treated differently than if she were just another guest. And if someone was hostile toward Debra, Trish would probably be the last to know. In disguise as Erin, she could snoop around all she needed to and also monitor results of the search for her sister.

  I love you, Debster. You have to know how much, especially since your fear-of-heights-and-flying sister has boarded a plane and is now headed toward the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway to find you. I’m praying the cloud cover means I won’t have to travel to the resort by helicopter.

  The plane taxied to a halt. Trish gathered her carry-on bag and purse and hurried through the Jetway. The first object that caught her eye upon entering the concourse was a large white poster board with Erin Fairchild printed across it in bold black letters. She took a second to register that the sign was intended for her.

  Next to attract her notice was the man holding the poster board. At over six feet tall and standing a head above the crowd of tourists and reuniting families, he would have captured her attention even without the conspicuous poster. The first word that came to mind was mysterious. Even in the midst of the milling throng, he exuded a sense of solitude and aloofness, as if surrounded by an invisible force field that caused the pulsing crowd to cut him a wide berth as they pressed past him toward the luggage carousels.