Secrets of Ugly Creek Read online

  “You think somebody is trying to shut the production down?”

  “First you had rocks thrown at you, now a smoke bomb.” I shrugged. “Seems to me shutting down the production is the most logical reason for the two attacks.”

  He took a moment to look at me, as if assessing my true feelings. “Those ‘attacks,’ as you call them, may not be related. And even if they are, that doesn’t mean they’re efforts to stop the shoot.”

  “Either way, they have to have slowed you down.” Why did that bother me? It was because the sooner they got done, the sooner they’d get out of Tennessee. Nothing to do with liking McFain.

  “We’ll make up the time.” It might have been my imagination, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  “What if there are more attacks?” I asked, trying not to allow the worry to show in my voice.

  “We’ll deal with them.” He put a hand to his neck and winced.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  He smiled weakly. “Just tired.”

  “I can see why.e”

  “Maybe I’m crazy saying this to a reporter, but I’m starving. Would you like to go somewhere and get something to eat?”

  I smiled. “Sounds good.”

  My cell chirped. I seriously considered not answering the dang thing. What did I care what whoever it was wanted? Then I looked at the readout. “Hello, Mr. Grainger.”

  “I found a photographer for you. She’s new, her name is Haven Reyes, and she’ll be landing at the McGhee Tyson Airport in about an hour.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  The phone clicked and I closed my eyes and counted to ten twice before I turned to Mac. “Sorry, I have to head to Knoxville.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but he looked disappointed. “Some other time?”

  “Sure thing.” Our gazes locked for a long, intense moment. Something clicked inside of me, something electric and exciting. He touched my arm as if he wanted to say something, and I felt a warm tingle. His hand dropped, and I gave him my best smile before I headed toward the parking area.

  At my car, I sat for a moment watching Mac and wondering what was wrong with me. How could I be attracted to somebody who had done so much damage to other people, a man who was only interested in making money, who didn’t care who he hurt. I must be nuts. Maybe I was just reacting to being alone too long while my closest friends were married. Yeah, that was the answer. I just needed to find some other, less dangerous, guy to hang my pathetic need for a man on. Maybe Liza could set me up or something.

  One thing was for sure, I wasn’t about to trust anybody with the safety of my odd, little hometown.

  Another thing, Dani had been nowhere in sight during the smoke bomb and its aftermath. Ha, scooped you.

  Chapter 5

  “Are you sure that’s what you want me to do?”

  My new photojournalist and I stood just outside town near a section of the forest we locals called “Ghost Hill” due to reported supernatural activity. Haven Reyes was five feet and a whisper, had light brown, shoulder-length hair, and was cute as a bug. Unfortunately, she had the self-confidence of a tree limb.

  “Yes, Haven,” I said. “Just use your own judgment and grab some shots to go with my story.”

  “What if I don’t get the right photos?”

  “You will. Don’t worry.”

  She frowned, and I didn’t know whether to hug the poor thing, try to slap some sense into her, or go sit in a corner and feel sorry for myself. How was I going to work with this unprofessional wimp?

  “Haven?”

  I turned toward the voice and saw Gibson McFain’s assistant standing near us.

  “Katie!”

  Haven and Kate Stone hugged as I watched in total disbelief. “You two know each other?”

  “We grew up on the same street,” Kate said. She smiled, and I clamped my teeth to keep my mouth from dropping open. Kate Stone smiling was as unexpected as Gizmo talking to me. Maybe more.

  “I’d better get back to work,” Kate said, hugged Haven again and headed back across the courthouse lawn toward the film crew.

  “She’s a nice person.” Haven said, before she headed off. Hopefully to take some great pics.

  I couldn’t believe my insecure photographer and the seriously self-assured assistant were friends. Very strange. Kate Stone wore expensive designer suits every day. In fact, she dressed in high-dollar designer from head to toe. I wasn’t jealous. Seriously, a person doesn’t have to spend a fortune to be fashionable. Okay, maybe I was a little jealous.

  Then again, fashionably dressed or not, Stone seemed to be trying to live up to her name. Cold, hard, and unyielding. The woman always looked like she could bite the head off a shark.

  “You can’t judge a heart by the body it’s clothed in.”

  The familiar voice had me grinning as I turned. “Aunt Octavia! How are you?”

  “I’m just fine, Madison.”

  The tiny woman isn’t my aunt, but everybody calls her Aunt Octavia. Nobody knows how old she is, but I’d say eighty would be conservative. Today she was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. “So you’re riding your Harley today.”

  “Yep, felt like stirring things up around here.”

  I groaned. “Seems to me things are stirred up enough.”

  She took my hand and turned it over to gaze at my palm. Yes, she reads palms, among other things. No, she’s not nuts. She’s a for-real psychic, and she was frowning. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not wrong, just confusing.”

  I almost laughed. “Aren’t the spirits always confusing?”

  “Not the spirits. You.”

  Well, that brought my eyebrows up. “I’m confusing? What happened to my aura of success?” The one I’d had since I was a teenager.

  “It’s still there, but it’s swirling and changing.” Auntie Octavia rubbed my palm with her fingertips like she was applying salve. “Changes are coming in your life, and you will have choices to make. Listen to your guide.”

  She let go of my hand and stepped back, leaving me staring at her like a kid who had just been told Santa Claus wasn’t real. “Guide? What guide? What are you talking about?”

  “Hit the dirt!”

  I was more confused than ever for a moment, but then I realized she had literally dropped to the ground and had her head covered with her arms. Before I could think much about grass stains and how much my pants cost, I dropped to my knees, leaned over, and put my hands on my head.

  Two seconds later, a bang followed by screams answered the unasked question.

  I started to help Aunt Octavia up, but she was already standing and brushing off her clothes. “Generator exploded. Thank God nobody was hurt bad.”

  I didn’t bother to ask how she knew. Her spirits told her, like they tell her everything else. Like they told her about my confused aura.

  Then I was running toward the production area, my heart banging hard against my throat. Somebody might be hurt. Oh, who was I kidding, Mac might be hurt. No idea why I’d care, but somehow I did. That dang man was making me crazy.

  When I got there Mac was fine, but the technician who did the sound work had a nasty burn. Mac was examining the guy’s arm. “You need to go see a doctor.”

  “I’m fine,” the guy said, though his face was becoming paler by the minute.

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “I’ll take him to the emergency room,” another member of the crew offered, and the sound tech took him up on the offer.

  They took off, and Mac turned my way. He opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was drowned out by high-pitched squealing.

  “Oh my God! It was horrible. We could have all been killed.” Haven rushed toward me, almost knocking me over in her hurry.

  I grabbed her shoulders, as much to push her back from me as to comfort her. “It’s all right, Haven. Everybody’s okay.”

  “I came here to take pictures of a docume
ntary, not to get blown up.”

  “Everything is fine now.”

  The sound of sirens announced the arrival of law enforcement. “The police are here,” I told her. “They’ll find whoever did this.”

  “What do I tell them?” Her eyes were widening again.

  “Just tell them what you saw.”

  A couple deep breaths later, she seemed to have calmed down. “Sorry.” She started to turn away, but stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “I think I saw something.”

  Her expression sent shivers up my nerves. “What do you mean?”

  “I think I saw a woman with wings. Should I tell the police?”

  No! “Just answer their questions and use your best judgment.”

  She nodded and walked away.

  I worked at holding back my own panic.

  ****

  “We’ll have to shut it down,” Gibson McFain looked like the sky was crashing in on him.

  Come to think of it, with the debris on the ground it almost looked like it was. We’d all been questioned and told the investigation was ongoing. Nobody had any idea what caused the explosion of the generator. Yeah, just like Aunt Octavia said. Also as she predicted, the only injuries were minor, with the exception of a moderate burn on the arm of the sound guy.

  “We can’t shut down.” Kate Stone’s lips were clamped into a stiff crimson line. “We have a tight schedule.”

  McFain stared at his assistant, blood vessels throbbing in his neck. “Kate, someone could have been seriously hurt.”

  Stone spun to face the sheriff. “If you had done your job and found the perpetrators, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Sheriff Richards didn’t blink. “Number one, we don’t know if this explosion is related to the other incidents. Number two, this isn’t DC or New York or some other big city. Ugly Creek is a small town with limited resources.” He glared at her for a moment. “You knew that when you chose to come here.”

  “He’s right, Kate,” McFain said. “We have to give them a chance to figure out what’s going on—but we can’t take unnecessary chances with the crew, or worse, the citizens of the town.”

  She stared at him. “So whoever is doing this, whatever little punk is pulling these pranks, is going to win?”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “You’re damn right, it isn’t.” Kate turned toward the wide-eyed Haven. “We might as well do lunch.”

  Haven looked at me, and I forced a smile for her. “Go. There’s nothing to do here.” Presumably she’d already taken shots of the damage, provided she’d stopped with the panic long enough. Right now, I didn’t much care. I was just glad nobody had been seriously injured.

  “So, any idea who’s responsible for all the problems?”

  I turned to find Gibson McFain next to me. “If I did, I’d be beating the crap out of them right now.”

  He chuckled. “Rather violent for such a pretty woman.”

  My heart did a little quiver, and I bit my tongue to keep from asking him if he really thought I was pretty. “What do you think?” I finally managed.

  “I think somebody really doesn’t like outsiders with video cameras.”

  “I’m sorry you have to shut down.”

  He looked at me, his dark eyes warming me as his gaze searched my soul. “No, you aren’t.”

  His words washed cold over my body, and I’m quite sure the folks in the next town could read the shock on my face. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. You don’t want me here anymore than whoever caused that explosion.”

  He was right, but I didn’t want him to hate me for it. “Look, this is my hometown. I know your reputation, and I can’t help but worry.”

  He took my hands in his. “I just want to document this beautiful area. I’m here because this town is special.”

  “Yes, it is.” At that moment, I wanted badly to trust him. But the cynical part of me, the part that frequently kept me out of trouble, didn’t trust him to protect our special corner of the world.

  He studied me for a moment, then dropped my hands. “I understand.”

  He walked away, and I turned toward my car ignoring the ache inside of me. No way was I going to let a little hormone-induced idiocy blind me to the knowledge that Gibson McFain was a dangerous man.

  Chapter 6

  I sat in a black metal lawn chair with comfy cushions. The mouth-watering smell of grilling steaks wafted from where Steve stood, long-handled spatula in one hand and long-handled, two-tined fork in the other. Liza came out the French doors that connected the back of their house to the large stone patio where I was currently making myself at home.

  On a metal and glass table near me, Liza put a huge salad near condiments, plates, and silverware. My stomach growled in anticipation. “Are you sure I can’t help you?”

  Liza smiled as she shook her head. “It’s just great to have you here.”

  It was true I rarely got a chance to visit my closest friends here in Ugly Creek. Most of the time I’m in DC, hunting down leads on stories or writing into the wee hours of the morning to make a deadline. It was good to be with people I cared about. People I trusted, and I seriously needed to talk to somebody I trusted. “I think the faeries may be behind the attacks on the documentary folks.”

  Liza’s eyes widened. To my left I heard Steve drop something.

  “Faeries?” Steve said. “Why the hell would you think that?”

  “I saw one when the smoke bomb incident happened, and I think Haven caught a glimpse of one when the generator blew.”

  “The faeries rarely come out of their territory. Not much gets them to interact with our world, why would they care about a documentary?” Liza asked. “I can’t believe they’d care enough to put themselves at risk to stop it.”

  “They might if they thought Gibson McFain might expose them to the world.” Steve’s face was as grim as I felt. It wasn’t a good feeling having my concerns voiced by someone else, especially someone as logical and levelheaded as Steve Zapata.

  “How would they even know about him and his film?” Liza dropped more than sat in the chair beside me.

  “I’m sure they keep track of humans.” Steve flipped the steaks without benefit of the dropped spatula.

  I sighed and leaned against the squishy cushion. “It’s almost like the non-humans are determined to be found out. First Mr. McDuffy argues with the mayor right in front of the documentary people, then Abukcheech was watching the shoot from behind a tree, and now faeries were spotted at the last two attacks. One of them by an outsider.”

  Inexplicably tears touched my eyes. “They’ve been hidden for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It would be horrible if they were proved to exist now. Can you imagine the freak-out? And people from all over coming to study—or dissect them. Their whole culture, their social structure, their very lifestyle would collapse.”

  Steve left the steaks to come over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Maddie, the non-humans will be protected.”

  I turned on my good friend. “Are you sure? They’ve never been subjected to this kind of danger. Gibson McFain can smell a secret, and we have a big one. Several, in fact.”

  “We’ll take care of them. Honest.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. I’d just make damn sure they were safe.

  “You know it’s strange,” Liza said, “that we have so many non-humans here. I know there are other places protecting Bigfoot tribes, but this is the only place I’ve ever heard of with such a large and varied population.”

  “Apparently there’s a reason for that.” Steve served up the steaks, and the three of us sat at the table. “Liza, you remember Randal Merletti?”

  “Of course. He came over for dinner one night.”

  Steve chuckled. “You tried to set him up with Phyllis Layton.”

  I narrowed my eyes so as to better study my friend. “Phyllis Layton? What were you thinking?”
/>   Liza glared. “I was thinking she is a nice woman, and they have a lot in common.”

  “Anyway,” Steve cut in. “Randal is a geologist. He says there’s a ley line convergence somewhere around here.

  He also told me our area has a high concentration of limestone, magnetite, and certain types of crystals that seem to attract non-humans and some types of seriously artistic or psychic humans.”

  “Sounds about right to me,” Liza said.

  “Me too.” I thought about that. “It might even be one of the reasons Mac was attracted to our town. I wonder if Dayton has that too.”

  “There could be non-humans running around down there too,” Liza said.

  “Actually, I’ve heard rumors.”

  We both looked at Steve, and he shrugged. “Just saying.”

  ****

  Three hours of great conversation and the best steak I’d ever tasted, I got in my Aveo and headed toward Mom’s. I was about halfway there when I caught a glimpse of a familiar mini-dachshund on the side of the road.

  As soon as I stopped the car, Gizmo ran over to me. “What are you doing out again?” I asked as I picked him up.

  “Looking for you,” the dog replied.

  To my credit, I didn’t drop the dog—or run screaming down the road. “So you really do talk. I didn’t imagine hearing you.”

  He licked my face, the varmint. “Of course I talk. How would I communicate with you if you couldn’t understand me?”

  I slid behind the wheel and put Gizmo on the passenger seat. “Ace is probably worried about you.”

  “He’s gone on a rescue trip. Besides, we need to have a conversation.”

  I tried to call Ace, but—surprise, surprise—he didn’t answer his cell.

  I dropped my head onto the steering wheel and looked at my furry passenger. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Take me home. I told you, we need to talk.”

  I sighed as I started the car. “This is so wrong.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

  I seriously doubted that, but getting in an argument with a dog wasn’t on my agenda for the day. Instead, I put the car in gear and headed home.