Page 3 of Lost Love Cove 4
“You could’ve fooled me.” Carrie’s voice held skepticism. “That’s not what sneaking into my room looked like to me.”
“I didn’t think you’d be in there as I saw you all rush out of the house,” Ian confessed.
“How did you get in here in the first place?” Carrie asked. “I locked the front door when we went after Oscar.”
“I want to know how you got back to the island,” Matt countered Carrie’s question. “We moved your unconscious body into a dinghy that Detective Lawrence sped away in.”
“Then we were told that Detective Lawrence and you were missing,” Andy added. “The dinghy was docked, but neither of you were anywhere to be found.”
“I can’t tell you what happened to Detective Lawrence,” Ian stated. “The last thing I remember was talking to Carrie in my study, then I woke up in a hospital bed in Key West with a letter beside my bed.”
“I didn’t put it there,” Oscar said quickly. “I wasn’t anywhere near Key West this afternoon.”
Ian ignored Oscar and continued. “The nurse told me the letter was left by the man who brought me into the ER,” he told them. “I asked who he was…” He swallowed. “The nurse told me the man was a detective who found me passed out in my car. And apparently my blood alcohol was through the roof.”
“You had a shot of bourbon and had just sipped your second when you passed out in your study,” Carrie informed Ian.
“Well, my hospital record says otherwise,” Ian told them. “Anyway, the nurse told me that the detective said I was a witness in a crime and there were instructions in the envelope on how to contact him.”
“What was actually in the envelope?” Matt managed to ask before anyone else, although he was as sure as he knew Carrie probably was, what it was about.
“It was a letter telling me that if I wanted to see my wife and son again and didn’t want to lose any more family members,” Ian’s voice dropped, and his eyes darkened with emotion, “that I knew what they wanted and that I had…”
“Twenty-four hours to deliver it,” Carrie finished for him and saw Ian’s eyebrows rise in surprise. “We got similar messages.”
“Only whoever has your wife and son,” Matt told Ian, “has our grandchildren.” He pointed from Carrie to himself.
2
CARRIE
“Oh no!” Ian breathed and awkwardly rubbed his face with his cuffed hands. “No, no, no, no,” he muttered, hiding his face in them. “This has just gone too far.” He lifted his head and drew in a breath. “I warned.” His jaw clenched, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before opening them and looking from Matt to Carrie. “When this first started, I thought, this is what you get you old bat for interfering in the lives of two people in love.” He breathed and bit his bottom lip before giving a low, mocking laugh. “I couldn’t believe my luck when I learned that horrible snobbish woman had lost all her money and needed to sell up her prized land.”
“Who are you talking about?” Carrie asked, her brows drawing tightly together and her heart racing in her chest.
“Delia Winters!” Ian scoffed. “The original matriarch of this entire beautiful cove we live in.”
“Delia Winters, the previous owner of my house?” Matt asked, a little alarmed by the malice in Ian’s voice, and Ian nodded. “So it is true then? This entire cove, including this house of Lori’s, my house, and yours, all belonged to her.”
Ian gave another snort. “Yes.” He nodded. “Then, when the land came up for sale,” he put air quotes when he said sale, “Trevor and I jumped at the opportunity to buy the plots our current houses are on.”
“How long ago was that?” Carrie asked.
“Twenty years?” Ian shrugged. “We built our houses and even tolerated the old bat nosing around and asking a million questions.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Even back then, Trevor found it strange that whenever we did something Delia Winters didn’t approve of on our property, we’d get a letter from what was called the ‘Lost Love Cove residence board’ telling us we couldn’t do that and needed to change it immediately.”
“There’s a residence board?” Carrie and Matt asked in unison.
“That’s what Trevor and I thought,” Ian said, awkwardly trying to run his hands through his hair, then giving up.
“Wait!” Carrie stopped him. “You worked with Trevor Carlton and Dick Stanstead?”
“Yes.” Ian nodded. “I was in charge of buying houses in exotic locations for my elite clientele that I took on charters.”
“And Trevor?” Carrie asked, desperate for anything that would exonerate Trevor from fraud charges.
“Trevor was involved in the large development projects,” Ian answered her. “Like malls, theme parks, hotels, hospitals, and grocery stores.”
“And what was Dick Stanstead in charge of?” Matt grilled Ian.
