Ozarks Missing Person
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Maggie Wells
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Prologue
Mallory Murray tipped her chin up and stared at the velvety black of the midnight sky. She would swear it was a shade darker on this tiny inlet of Table Rock Lake than anywhere else. The stars gleamed bright white against the backdrop. Thousands of them spread out like polka dots.
Beneath her feet, a powerful engine revved. The sleek boat knocked against the floating dock as Trey and another guy threw off the lines and hauled in the bumpers. Instinctively, she widened her stance to keep her balance. She was born on these lakes. Had been boating since she could walk. But her dad’s ancient pontoon was nothing like the expensive ski boat she stood on now.
And she wasn’t a carefree young girl excited to go swimming. She had a larger mission at hand. One she wasn’t certain she could accomplish. The food she’d consumed since arriving at the Powerses’ lake house threatened to come back up, but she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe evenly. She had to focus.
Though she had grown up less than fifteen miles from the spot where Trey Powers’s grandfather had built his eccentric but spectacular castle in the Ozark wilderness, it may as well have been a different galaxy. The locals and the wealthy families who established their weekend escapes on waterfront parcels didn’t often mix. Their mutually beneficial relationship was cordial but nowhere near friendly. People like Mallory and sweet Mrs. Gibbons, the housekeeper Trey’s family employed, were usually working in more of a service capacity. The lake people rarely mixed with locals socially.
Except for Mallory and Trey. She and Trey Powers had been interacting for nearly five years, off and on. Now, she was ready to flip the switch to on. Permanently.
“Everybody ready?” Trey called from his spot behind the wheel.
The night breeze blew her hair into her face as she turned, but Mallory didn’t care. She aimed her brightest, widest smile on him, afraid if she tried to shout over the roar of the engine a quaver in her voice might give her away.
Trey grinned as a chorus of cheers rose from the four other passengers crammed onto the back of the boat. An answering roar came from the crowd on the pontoon in the next slip.
Mallory cast a wary glance at the revelers on the other boat. There were too many of them on board. There certainly weren’t enough life jackets to go around. And nearly everyone had been drinking. Possibly for hours. But rules and regulations didn’t apply to Trey Powers.
His family made them for others to follow.
With his hand wrapped around the throttle, Trey jerked his chin, signaling for her to come closer. She complied.
The kiss he planted on her was hard and sloppy. She could taste the lingering smokiness from the scotch he’d been drinking on his lips and did her best not to cringe. Trey was handsome. He was the heir to his family’s law firm in Bentonville. Over the years, Mallory had often wondered which had come first, the Powers name or the actual power the people born under it had accumulated.
Her heart thrummed along with the engine as he eased the throttle up. The boat bumped the slip when he backed out, and she ducked away from the towing bar, where racks of wakeboards wavered perilously close.
She’d been relieved to see him today. Not because she’d missed him, but because almost eight weeks had passed since they were together, and she’d had no way to contact him. Trey liked to make a joke out of not giving her his phone number, telling her she’d see him when she saw him. And he always came around. But now... Now, she needed to see him and hadn’t wanted to try to reach him through his family’s firm.
Moving closer to where Trey stood at the wheel, she tried to shout over the blaring music coming from the boat’s state-of-the-art sound system. “Maybe we shouldn’t go out.”
But Trey couldn’t hear her. Or chose not to. He and his friends had already been partying when they stumbled into Stubby’s, the roadside bar and grill on Highway 62 where she worked.
He’d told her they were on their way from Beaver Lake to the Powers place on Table Rock Lake for a crawfish boil. It was clear they’d been drinking most of the day, but Trey was his usual charming, friendly self. His face lit when he walked through the door and spotted her. The last she’d seen of him was the back of his mussed hair as he exited the storeroom behind the bar where they’d hooked up. Again.
But he must have been genuinely pleased to see her, because he left the pouty girl he’d walked in with to invite her to come along to his family’s place on the lake for the party. He’d never invited her to go farther than the back room. Or the parking lot.
Mallory had untied her apron as fast at her eager fingers would allow. Steve, the guy who owned Stubby’s, made his customary threats about firing her, but she’d ditched out on shifts before. She knew Steve’s threats were empty ones. Good waitresses weren’t easy to come by out in the Middle of Nowhere, Arkansas. When she showed up for her shift Saturday night, they’d both act like nothing had happened.
Trey revved the boat’s powerful engine, jolting her into the present. She backed off a step. A midnight cruise with Trey Powers by her side was too tempting to pass up. They’d been playing this game of cat and mouse since she was eighteen, sleeping together every now and again for the better part of those years. But he’d been around less frequently this summer, and she could sense him slipping through her fingers. Yesterday it had looked like she was running out of options, but today it felt like fate was smiling on her.
She’d never been inside anywhere near as fancy the legendary lake house built by the first Tyrone Delray Powers. She’d done her best not to gawk when he led her into the place. On the outside, it looked like some kind of European castle, but on the inside it was all luxurious hunting lodge, complete with gleaming wood beams, real wood paneling and dozens of taxidermic trophies dotting the walls.
She could totally see herself throwing parties there once she and Trey made things official.
Trey gave the engines a bit more juice, and the boat began to move. Psyching herself up to play the wild-child role she knew he expected from her, she called out, “Let’s do this!” with far more enthusiasm than she felt.
Trey threw his head back and laughed. Mallory smiled to herself, proud she’d pleased him. He’d once told her he liked her because she made him laugh. She was fairly sure the easy laughter they shared was what kept him coming back.
Trying to be unobtrusive, she grasped the safety bar as he swung the boat wide. One of the other women aboard fell forward against the back of Mallory’s seat, giggling and crying out a slurry “Whoops!”
Even in the dim light, Mallory could see the petite girl’s brown hair had been meticulously, and probably expensively, highlighted to a warm tawny gold. She dug her French-tipped nails into the pristine white leather upholstery as she attempted to regain her balance.
Of course, Trey chose that moment to take off at full speed.
The bow of the boat lifted, and the other girl tumbled back into one of Trey’s friends. He stood out from the usual gaggle of young fellow hotshot lawyers who followed Trey around like ducklings. He was older. Stiffer. And Mallory would swear he looked vaguely familiar. Like she’d seen his face on the news or a billboard or something.
She tightened her grip on the safety bar. A startled laugh popped out of her as the front of the boat hit the water with a hard slap.
“Easy, cowboy,” she called to Trey, but the wind ripped the words away.
Her hair streamed back from her face. Any minute now, Trey would turn against the night breeze and the loose strands would start whipping her mercilessly, but she didn’t want to tie it back. She had to contain it every shift she worked at Stubby’s. The wind sliding through it and lifting the weight of it from her shoulders felt glorious.
True to his reckless nature, Trey was driving too close to the shoreline for safety. As they zoomed past the shadowy figures of towering trees backlit by a sliver of moon, Mallory smirked. It was a good thing the Powers family and timber companies owned most of the adjoining acreage. There would be no neighbors to complain.
God, she loved this life. Deep down in her heart, she believed she was meant for it. She wanted it so badly she could taste it. And she was so close. All she had to do was convince Trey their future was written in the stars, and she’d have it all.
She wouldn’t have to bust her hump working the way her brother did, scraping together every bit of prestige he could. No, she would have everything she’d ever wanted tied up in one big package with a silky white bow.
Trey eased up on the speed long enough to shout something back to one of his pals. A chorus of voices protested, but Trey ignored them.
Trey rarely did anything except exactly what he wanted to do.
But Mallory had always been able to key into Trey’s moods. Tonight he was restless and rowdy. The crowd he’d started with at Stubby’s had tripled in size when the caterers had dumped the food onto butcher paper–covered trestle tables. After they feasted, the serious drinking began.
Shots were poured and tossed back with abandon. Dares and taunts flew back and forth across the massive fire pit built into the terraced patio. She knew when Trey said something about taking the boat out for a cruise, he would make it happen. She also knew when he was in one of these moods, the best thing anyone could do was go along.
Giving in, she yanked the elastic hair band from her wrist and bundled her hair up in a messy bun atop her head.
“You okay over there, beautiful?” Trey asked her.
Beautiful. He always called her beautiful. Like her looks were the sum total of who she was. And, to Trey, they probably were. Sometimes she wondered if he even remembered her name. But it didn’t matter. Soon, he’d never forget it.
“Everything’s perfect,” she replied.
In that moment, she meant it.
Mallory gazed upward again and stared at the infinite blanket of stars above them. She fixated on one in particular. It burned so brightly she wondered if it was actually an airplane winging its way across the night sky. She stood engrossed, forgetting to take hold of the bar again or plant her feet to brace against the boat’s sudden acceleration.
A sharp round of squawks and squeals erupted behind her. Trey swung the wheel wide to the left, playing chicken with the shoreline. Mallory righted herself enough to make a grab for the top of the windscreen, but her first attempt missed. She grabbed hold as the silhouettes of the looming trees moved closer at an alarming rate. Trey’s laughter drifted to her on the wind.
“You’re not scared, are you, beautiful?” he mocked.
She shook her head and released her hold, stubbornly refusing to give him the satisfaction. With her feet under her again and her knees flexed, she forced another smile and wagged her head. “Nope.”
To prove her point, she shifted her gaze from the rapidly approaching shore to the sky yet again, looking upward, pretending she hadn’t a care in the world. It was a beautiful sight. One of those clear summer nights when the heavens felt close enough to touch.
Another guy aboard gave a shout. Trey laughed and turned the wheel sharply. The boat pitched to starboard. Mallory continued to stare at the sky, pleased she wasn’t the one to flinch, even if her stomach was heaving. Trey would be happy. If she made Trey happy, maybe he would make her happy in return. She hoped.
The boat slowed to a sedate cruise, and she exhaled long and shaky, grateful she hadn’t lost her dinner over the side.
“You okay there?” he asked, his voice low and intimate.
She was still looking up, a smug smile curving her lips. She should have waited to tell him there, out on the water. It would have been much better than blurting it in the kitchen. She could have plastered a dopey, smitten smile on her face and let the wind carry the words I’m pregnant to him. Maybe he would have been more excited about it all.
Instead, he’d gone all lawyer on her. Asking all the questions she knew he would ask but hoped he wouldn’t. It took all the restraint she could muster not to go off on him. She’d managed to nod and play it cool when he said they’d talk more about it in private.
She’d wait. See how he wanted to handle things. And if his answers weren’t to her liking, maybe she’d see how his mama and daddy felt about having a grandbaby.
“I’m great,” she answered, pressing her hand to her stomach as she leaned in to kiss his stubbled cheek. “Now get this sardine can moving.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered smartly and took up his position at the wheel once more.
There was a rev and a roar as the boat’s turbocharged props kicked into gear. It was obnoxious, but she laughed out loud. The people behind them screeched, whooped and shouted. A cheer went up from the other boat as some of the guys lit Roman candles and fired them into the sky.
Trey slowed, allowing the others to turn and watch. A wakeboard someone hadn’t secured to the rack slid across the decking as the boat rocked wildly in its own residual wake.
“Here, let me get this out from between us,” Trey said, then he bent to scoop up the board. “Forgot to put it on the rack.”
Out from between us. Soon there’d be nothing between them. Soon, he’d be all hers. She had to believe her dreams would come true.
Throwing her head back, she caught sight of a pink fireball in the sky. She traced its arc as she let the daydream take hold.
Trey Powers.
Mallory Powers.
Trey and Mallory Powers.
What would be a good nickname for sweet little Tyrone Delray Powers the Fourth? He had a cousin called Del. Maybe Chip?
She was tossing names around in her head when the deck shifted and Trey stepped closer. The change in momentum threw her. She heard the zip whistle of a bottle rocket zooming into the sky. The deck shifted again, and she reached up for the tow bar. A whisper of warm, whisky-scented breath tickled her cheek. She lowered her head to peer at Trey, but something hit her hard on the head. Distantly, she heard the thunk of it, but everything started to spin.
She was falling.
Fainting?
Someone shouted.
The chill of the water shocked her into stillness. Mallory caught one more glimpse of the twinkling stars.
Then everything went black.
